


late, but not too late

by ImpishTubist



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fluff, Genderfluid Character, Getting Together, Kid Fic, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24710497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist
Summary: Seven years ago, Crowley stole the Antichrist from the hospital in Tadfield with the intention of averting the Apocalypse. He named him Warlock.Seven years ago, Aziraphale stole the Antichrist from the hospital in Tadfield with the intention of averting the Apocalypse. He named him Adam.With four years to go until the end of the world, an accidental summoning forces the four of them to cross paths. Now, Aziraphale and Crowley must figure out which child is the real Antichrist, keep the boys hidden from their respective sides, and prevent Doomsday from wiping out humanity.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 106
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Queen’s “It’s Late”.
> 
> I can’t make any promises about a regular posting schedule, as this fic is the happy place I go to when I need to escape working on my Actual Book that I am on an Actual Deadline for. But a good portion of it is already written and I don’t intend to abandon it, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.
> 
> Anyway, welcome to the Dad Zone (™). Enjoy your stay!

The way Crowley’s week was going, he really wasn’t all that surprised to find himself inside a summoning circle. 

He  _ was  _ annoyed, though. His irritation was compounded by the fact that, this time, he hadn’t been summoned by a cult, or even by a group of bored teenage girls having a sleepover.

No, this time it appeared as though a  _ literal child  _ had managed to summon him.  _ That  _ was embarrassing, that was. 

“What,” he said, “the  _ fuck _ .”

The child in question was sitting cross-legged on the floor of what appeared to be a bookshop. A bookshop that specialized in old and rare tomes, if what little Crowley could see of it in the dark was anything to go by. The child--a young boy--had an unruly mop of golden hair and was regarding him with an endearingly quizzical expression.

“Hello! Are you a demon?” he asked.

“Am I a--of course I’m a bloody demon!” Crowley snapped. “What else would I be, an aardvark?” 

The kid blinked at him. 

“S’pose you could be, if you wanted,” he allowed. “Can’t demons change their shape?” 

Crowley rolled his eyes.  _ Honestly _ . And he’d been halfway through a  _ Golden Girls _ marathon, too. It was the first evening he’d had to himself in a week, and he had intended to make the most of it. Warlock was finally on the mend from the ‘flu, and Crowley had been able to relax enough to turn on the television and tune out the world for a bit while his son slept. 

“No,” he said, even though it was a lie. Well, mostly a lie. He  _ could _ change into a snake, after all, if he felt like it. He hated doing that, though. He was always afraid he would forget how to change back. “Do you need something? ‘Cause I’ve got a packed schedule, you know. Loads to do. Demon things.” 

“Oh.” The kid looked perplexed. “No, don’t s’pose I do. Just wanted to see if this worked.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. Seriously? “That’s why you drew a summoning circle, worked a bit of complex and ancient magic, and summoned a demon? To see if it would work?’

The kid shrugged. “Pretty much.”

He couldn’t have been older than Warlock. Six, seven years old at the outside. Crowley narrowed his eyes.

“Where did you learn this?” he asked. “How to summon a demon, I mean.” 

“Got it from a book.”

Interesting. “Mind showing me that book?” 

“Yeah, I do.” The kid lifted his chin slightly, defiant. “You’re trying to trick me.”

Ah, well, it was worth a try. “What’s your name, kid?”

He considered Crowley for a moment, and then said, “Adam.” 

“Adam. Nice name. Knew a chap who went by it, once.” The  _ first  _ one, as it happened. “How old are you, Adam?” 

“Seven,” Adam said, and then as Crowley continued to stare at him, he glanced away and admitted, “Six. But I’ll be seven on Sunday.” 

So would Warlock. Crowley narrowed his eyes at that. He didn’t particularly care for coincidences. Unfortunately, he had other concerns at the moment.

“Look, as much fun as this has been, I need to go home now,” Crowley said. He got to his feet and brushed himself off.  _ Satan _ , this bookshop was dusty. How on Earth did the proprietor convince customers to set foot in such a dirty shop? “I’ve got a kid your age, and I don’t want to leave him alone for much longer.”

Adam’s eyes widened. “Demons can have  _ kids _ ?’

“This demon does. And he’s got the power to end all of creation, so you really should send me home before he gets angry and destroys the entire planet.” 

“Ugh,  _ fine _ .” Adam pulled a book out from behind him, set it on the floor, and flipped it open. He moved too quickly for Crowley to catch a glimpse of the cover or the spine. “But I’m calling you back later, yeah? We gotta finish talking.”

“Wait--”

But Adam had already started the incantation, and seconds later, Crowley was blinking up at his bedroom ceiling.

Bloody Hell, he  _ hated  _ being summoned. Always left him feeling hungover, for one thing, which was especially irritating if he hadn’t at least been able to enjoy all the benefits of being drunk beforehand. And, unlike a hangover, he couldn’t miracle this feeling away. He would just have to wait for it to pass, which either took a few hours or a few days. Crowley groaned and shimmied under the blankets, and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. 

Warlock woke him with a coughing fit in the morning. Crowley had soundproofed his own room the day he stole Warlock from the Tadfield hospital (which had proved to be unnecessary, as it turned out that raising human children put a severe damper on one’s sex life), but had made sure that it only worked one way, so he could still hear every sound that emanated from Warlock’s room. When the coughing fit didn’t ease after a few minutes, Crowley threw back the covers and got unsteadily to his feet. 

“All right, Hellspawn, time for your medicine,” he said a little while later as he shouldered open the door to Warlock’s room. He deposited the bottles of medicine on Warlock’s bedside table and sat down on the mattress near Warlock’s knees. “Come on, sit up.” 

With a miserable groan, Warlock pushed himself into a sitting position. Crowley stuffed a couple of pillows behind his back, and then measured out the medication in small cups for Warlock to take.

It was awfully inconvenient, he thought, for Satan to create a child who was as fragile as a normal human. Warlock fell ill, he broke bones, he suffered cuts and bruises while playing with other human children. Not that Crowley was in any position to question Satan. It was only that, if it had been up to  _ him _ , he would have created an Antichrist who didn’t fall victim to the ‘flu. 

Of course, it  _ wasn’t _ up to him. All he’d been responsible for was delivering the Antichrist to an American family so that he could bring about an end to the world. He just hoped that, when Warlock turned eleven, it would turn out that he liked the world well enough  _ not  _ to bring about that end. 

Warlock swallowed all the medication without complaint, though he made several disgusted faces. Crowley wished he could use his powers to ease the boy’s suffering, but he didn’t like to draw attention to himself. If Hell caught wind that he had a child that was living with him, that he  _ cared _ for...well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Crowley helped Warlock lay back down, and then he felt the boy’s forehead. His fever had broken, finally. 

“I have to go into work for a few hours,” he said. “Will you be alright?”

“Yeah, Dad, m’fine.” Warlock turned on his side and pulled the blankets up to his shoulders. “See ya later.” 

He’d tried to get the boy to call him something,  _ anything  _ other than Dad. Crowley, Anthony, AJ--he’d tried them all out when Warlock was small, and none of them ever stuck. Warlock knew that Crowley wasn’t his father, but somehow that had never stopped him from calling Crowley  _ Dad _ . 

“Yeah, alright,” he said, running his fingers through Warlock’s hair once before getting up. “See you later, kid.” 

Crowley kept an office downtown, on the top floor of a steel and glass building which offered him an uninterrupted view of London. He filed his reports to Hell from here, communicated with Hastur and Ligur and the other denizens of Hell when necessary, and checked up on the progress of the fake Antichrist, who was currently being raised by a truly insufferable American couple.

“What’s the little monster up to today,” Crowley muttered as he took a seat at his desk and grabbed the stack of papers that had appeared overnight. He’d installed a nanny and a gardener to keep an eye on little Teddy Dowling. They sent him regular reports that Crowley dressed up as needed before he forwarded them to Hell. 

Teddy Dowling was nothing short of a hellion, much worse than the  _ actual  _ Antichrist, and the reports Crowley received every week reinforced the fact that humans were as bad as demons--even worse, sometimes. In contrast to Teddy Dowling’s increasingly horrible antics, the worst thing that could be said about Warlock was that he was somewhat sullen. 

_ Actually _ , the worst thing that could be said about Warlock was that he kept nicking Crowley’s makeup and thought that Crowley hadn’t caught on yet. 

Crowley read over the reports from the nanny and gardener, which honestly didn’t need much embellishment from him, and sent them along to Hell. He then poured himself a glass of whiskey, even though it was barely noon, because that seemed like the kind of thing the human he was trying to be would do. He leaned back in his chair, savoring the burn of alcohol down his throat, and thought about the previous night.

_ Adam _ . What an innocuous name for such an extraordinary child. A child who had managed to summon Lucifer’s right hand to his side with hardly any effort. Crowley snapped his fingers, and his powerful desktop computer hummed to life. Bookshops. It was a bookshop he’d been summoned to last night, he was certain of it. Sure, it could have been a personal library, but he’d caught a glimpse of a till behind Adam’s shoulder. How many old bookshops could London have, anyway? 

Quite a few, as it turned out. Crowley filtered out the ones that carried modern books as well, and was still left with fifty-two shops that fit the bill. Right, well, he’d been summoned to a bookshop in the middle of the night by a six-year-old kid. That likely meant that the kid lived there. How many bookshops in London had flats above them? 

He managed to narrow his search down to twelve possibilities before he gave up for the day. He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his aching eyes. They weren’t exactly designed for reading, much less staring at small print and intricate maps on a bright screen for a long period of time. 

Crowley’s phone chimed. He glanced at it, and then snorted. 

_ Lunch?  _ Warlock had written, and then tacked on a hopeful smiley face at the end. 

_ Not pizza _ , Crowley texted back. Honestly, if left to his own devices, Warlock would live on a diet of cereal, pizza, and ice cream.

_ Ramen?  _

That seemed like a safe enough meal for a kid who had spent the majority of the past two days with his head in a toilet. Their favorite ramen place was right around the corner from Crowley’s Mayfair flat.

_ Sure. Be home in half an hour _ . 

****

Aziraphale unlocked the front door of the bookshop, slipped inside, and closed it quietly behind him. He did up the locks and took off his jacket, hanging it on the nearby hook. He paused for a moment, listening. The shop was silent, and all the lights had been turned out. He smiled to himself. Adam was notorious for going to bed without remembering to turn out at least half the lights, so this was progress. 

He crossed quietly to the stairs that led to the flat above the shop. It was a cozy space, large enough for two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and an office. He mounted the steps, deftly avoiding the one that creaked horribly, and stood for a moment in the darkened hallway.

“Adam?” Aziraphale called softly. He paused, listening, but there was no response. If Adam was awake, he would have answered. He had unnatural hearing, for a child. But when he slept, he was dead to the world, and Aziraphale doubted that even tanks rolling through the street could wake him. 

Aziraphale padded down the hallway. He eased open the door to Adam’s room and glanced inside. Adam was indeed asleep on the bed, the blankets tangled about his waist. The book he’d been reading had fallen to the floor and was lying there face-down. Aziraphale crossed over to the bed, picked it up, and marked Adam’s page before setting it carefully on the bedside table. 

“Good night, my boy,” he whispered, smoothing the hair off Adam’s forehead to kiss his brow. Adam didn’t so much as twitch. Aziraphale then left the boy to sleep, and retreated to his office. 

It wasn’t often that he left Adam alone in the shop, especially not at night, but he’d received a promising lead about some first editions he had been trying to acquire for his collection for years, and his usual babysitter hadn’t been available. Adam was a responsible child; he could occupy himself for a few hours in the bookshop. Not to mention that after two centuries of occupation, enough of Aziraphale’s magic had seeped into the shop to offer a layer of ethereal protection. So, after several days of negotiations, Aziraphale had finally met the prospective seller this evening for dinner and drinks, closed the deal, and should see the shipment of books by the end of the week. All in all, it had been a most successful evening. 

Humming happily to himself, he poured a glass of wine and settled cross-legged on the floor to finish wrapping Adam’s birthday presents. Seven years. Where had the time gone? It seemed only yesterday that he had brought a plump-cheeked and unnaturally well-behaved infant home. He was now only eleven years away from university and adulthood. Aziraphale wasn’t ready for it, not in the slightest. 

He finished wrapping the last of Adam’s presents and stacked them neatly on his desk. He contemplated them for a moment, hands on his hips, and decided that they were sufficient. Not that Adam cared much for material items, but Aziraphale wanted to make sure the boy felt loved and appreciated on all fronts. He was turning seven this Sunday--not a particularly significant landmark by human standards, but it warranted celebration anyway. Adam would open his presents over breakfast on the morning of his birthday, and then Aziraphale would pick up a cake in the afternoon for them to share in the evening. They would spend the day together--usually Adam liked to go to the park and chase the ducks, which Aziraphale only put up a token protest about. He much preferred simply feeding the ducks and watching them swim about, but Adam was a young boy full of energy. He wasn’t hurting anyone, and the ducks were certainly none the worse for wear. 

“Dad?” 

Aziraphale turned to see Adam standing in the doorway, knuckling his eyes sleepily.

“Hello, darling,” he said softly, going over to Adam and scooping him into his arms. “What are you doing awake?” 

“Wanted to stay up an’ see you.” Adam looped his arms around Aziraphale’s neck and yawned, his jaw cracking. 

“I told you I would be out late negotiating a deal.” Aziraphale carried Adam back to his room and settled him on the bed. “You’ll see me in the morning, dearest, there’s no reason to wait up.”

“But I missed you.” 

“Oh, darling.” Aziraphale pressed a kiss to Adam’s cheek. “I’m so sorry. Did you have a good night?”

“Yeah.” Adam yawned again. “Read some books. Played some games. Dad, can we get a dog?”

“No, my dear,” Aziraphale said gently, stifling a laugh. “There are too many delicate books in the shop. We can’t risk having a pet, not now.”

“But someday?”

“We can certainly discuss it again someday,” Aziraphale said, which sounded like a nice compromise to him. Better than an outright  _ no _ , at least. “But not right now. Right now, you need to sleep.”

Adam gave what sounded like a mumbled protest, though Aziraphale couldn’t make out the words. He pulled the blankets up to Adam’s shoulders, tucking him in, and sat with him until he fell asleep. 

****

Crowley woke up on Sunday to seventy pounds’ worth of child landing on his legs. He grunted and tried uselessly to pull the duvet up over his head.

“ _ Warlock _ ,” he groaned. “It’s the bloody  _ middle of the night _ . Go back to bed.” 

“But it’s my birthday!” Warlock grabbed the duvet and yanked it out of Crowley’s grasp. Crowley reached for a pillow and shoved his head under it. “ _ Dad _ . Wake up, come on. Please? And it’s not the middle of the night, it’s eight!” 

“Still too damn early,” Crowley grumbled. 

“Can we open presents?” Warlock was now sitting on Crowley’s lower back, severely hampering his ability to move. Or breathe.

“Who says I got you anything, Hellspawn?”

He could practically hear Warlock’s eye roll. “ _ Dad _ . You  _ always  _ get me something. It’s my birthday.” 

“Well, I can’t very well give you your presents with you sitting on me, can I?”

Warlock scrambled off him. Crowley rolled over. 

“Right. Brush your teeth, shower, and get dressed. Then breakfast, then presents. Got it?” 

Warlock jumped off the bed and hurried off to get ready. That bought him at least half an hour, Crowley thought, and he rolled over and closed his eyes.

His respite was short-lived. Warlock got ready for the day in under fifteen minutes, and Crowley reluctantly hauled himself out of bed to make breakfast. 

“And what does my Hellspawn want for his birthday breakfast?” Crowley asked, ruffling Warlock’s hair as he passed behind him in the kitchen. 

“Pancakes,” Warlock said. “And eggs. And bacon!”

Ah, gluttony. That was a checkmark in favor of Warlock’s evil tendencies, then. He would have to take Warlock out later to do some good to counteract it. Still, Crowley couldn’t resist adding little devil horns to the circular pancakes, and drawing scowling faces on them with the syrup. Warlock giggled when he saw them. 

“You’re silly, Dad,” he said, before happily digging into his breakfast. He inhaled all the food in under ten minutes. Crowley shook his head, amazed at the amount of food the child could put away without seeming to gain a pound. 

“Careful, you’re going to give yourself a stomach ache,” he said, not that it did much to deter Warlock. 

Warlock frowned at him. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

Seven years spent raising this child, and still Crowley forgot sometimes how to act like a human around him. He didn’t need to eat,  _ hated  _ eating in fact, but he had to keep up appearances for Warlock. 

“Right, yeah, ‘course,” he said, and grabbed a couple of strips of bacon. He forced them down, grimacing at the texture and taste. At least it was a relatively small piece of food. When Warlock was younger, he’d made the mistake of unhinging his jaw a couple of times to swallow a particularly large piece of meat. Thankfully, the boy had been too young then for the memory to stick. “Right, are you ready for your presents?”

Warlock brightened. “Really?”

“Yeah,  _ really _ , did you think I wasn’t going to get you anything?” Crowley opened a cabinet and pulled out a pile of wrapped gifts he had hidden there. He’d been up half the night getting them ready the human way, because he didn’t want Hell to audit him and come asking uncomfortable questions. “Happy birthday, Warlock.” 

Warlock unwrapped the books first. He was a child of varied interests that seemed to change by the day, sometimes even by the hour. Crowlely had purchased a beginner chemistry set and accompanying book for him, as well as a book that covered the history of ballet and one that covered major dinosaur species from the Triassic period. He didn’t have the heart to explain to Warlock that dinosaurs were the Almighty’s big joke on humanity--and besides, that would involve telling the boy far more about himself than he was comfortable with.

Warlock came to the last gift, a rectangular box wrapped in silver paper. He opened it carefully, like he did with every other gift, like he was trying to save the wrapping paper to use again later. He held the box in his hands for a moment, staring at it blankly, lips parted in surprise. 

“You’ve been using my makeup when you think I’m not looking,” Crowley said. “Thought you might like to have some of your own instead.” 

Warlock continued to say nothing. He brushed his fingers over the makeup kit, and swallowed hard.

“Dad…” He trailed off uncertainly, and then said in a small voice, “I’m sorry.” 

“What? No! Don’t be sorry. Why would you be sorry?” Crowley sat next to him at the table. “I just want you to have your own stuff, okay? I don’t care that you took some of mine, but you should have makeup that’s yours. And...I can show you how to use it, if you want? How to do the things that I do with it? Only if you want, I know there are YouTube videos that will show you…”

“No,” Warlock said quickly. “I want you to show me. If--if you want.” 

“Of course I want.” Crowley ran his fingers through Warlock’s hair, and then suddenly the boy was in his arms. 

“Thanks, Dad,” he said thickly. 

“No problem, kid,” Crowley said. He rubbed Warlock’s back, and then pulled away. “Now, do you still want to go to the zoo?” 

Warlock  _ loved  _ the zoo. He would spend every day of the summer holidays there if Crowley let him, and often said that he wanted to be a zookeeper when he grew up, or a veterinarian. That was a tally mark in favor of Good, at least--respect and love for all living creatures was a good sign that Warlock might not choose to end the world once he came into his powers. 

Four years. That was all the time he had left with Warlock. Even if the boy chose not to end all of Creation, it was more than likely that he would be recalled to Hell to serve at Lucifer’s side. And Crowley, if he was  _ very  _ lucky, would be swiftly destroyed after that. If he was very  _ unlucky _ , which tended to happen more often than he liked, he would spend the rest of eternity in one of the torture pits. 

“Dad, they’ve got a new python in the reptile house!” Warlock tugged on his sleeve, breaking Crowley out of his thoughts. “Come on, come see!” 

“I’m right behind you,” Crowley assured him, and Warlock took off running for the exhibit. 

The python was huge, vibrantly green, and gorgeous. She was also desperately miserable, and worried about the babies she had been snatched from. Crowley listened patiently while Warlock excitedly rattled off all the facts he knew about the green tree python, humming now and then to show that he was still paying attention. Eventually, Warlock’s attention was drawn to another part of the exhibit, and he dragged Crowley off. But not before Crowley made a couple of minor alterations to the tank the python was kept in, so that she would be able to find her way out in the middle of the night. He also rearranged reality slightly so that all surveillance cameras in this part of the exhibit would malfunction after the zoo shut down, and the guards wouldn’t think to check the reptile house until the morning. 

They had dinner that evening in front of the television, eating straight from the pizza box and not even bothering with plates. Crowley painted Warlock’s nails while they watched a movie, and then touched up the black paint on his own nails. Warlock begged to stay up until midnight, but fell asleep with his head pillowed against Crowley’s thigh at ten. Crowley was debating the merits of another glass of wine when he felt a sharp tug behind his sternum, and gritted his teeth against the sudden pain. 

“ _ Damn it _ ,” he hissed under his breath. “No, not now, not--”

He blinked, and found himself sitting inside a summoning circle. 

“Bless it,” he cursed, scowling at the boy-- _ Adam _ \--who had summoned him. “What do you want now?” 

“Dad went to sleep,” Adam said, lifting one skinny shoulder in a shrug. He was holding a controller in his hand, and there was another sitting at his side. “And m’bored. Wanna play?” 

“I--did you just summon a demon to play  _ video games  _ with you?” 

“They’re really fun,” Adam said, eyes wide and imploring. “Please?” 

Oh, for Hell’s sake. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“It’s my birthday. Dad always lets me stay up late on my birthday, as long as I’m quiet. We’ll play with the sound off and everything.” 

“No.”

“Please?” Adam held out the other controller. “Just one game? It’ll be quick, I promise.” 

Crowley buried his face in his hands. Somebody save him from sweet, lonely children. 

“Look,” he said, lifting his head. “I’ll make you a deal. I’m a demon, that’s what we do. Send me back home, and I’ll come back and play games with you another time. Okay? It’s just that I was in the middle of something, and--”

“What were you doing?” Adam interrupted. 

Crowley sighed. “I have a kid, remember? We were in the middle of a movie night and I vanished on him, so he’s probably scared out of his mind right now, and I’d really like to get back to him.”

“He’s all alone?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. He had no idea why he was being so forthcoming with this boy. “It’s just me and him. So can you send me back? Please? And next time you summon me, just make sure it’s not the middle of the night.” 

Adam’s face fell, but he nodded. 

Crowley blinked, and found himself stretched out flat on the floor in his living room. Warlock was still on the couch, fast asleep, drooling onto one of the cushions. The television was still on, playing whatever movie Crowley had thrown on after Warlock fell asleep. He couldn’t even remember what it was.

“All right, Hellspawn,” he murmured, getting to his feet and lifting Warlock into his arms. “Time for bed.”

He settled Warlock in his bed, pulled up the blankets, and tucked Warlock’s favorite stuffed lion in his arms. 

“Happy birthday, baby,” he whispered, brushing his lips over Warlock’s forehead, and then he took his leave.

****

Aziraphale closed the shop after lunch. A solid three hours of business was good enough for one day--and besides, he reasoned, he had a  _ very  _ important appointment this afternoon.

“Are you ready, dearest?” he asked, poking his head into Adam’s room. Adam stood by the full-length nineteenth-century mirror, the pink tip of his tongue poking through his teeth as he fumbled with his tie.

“Almost, Dad!” he chirped. 

Aziraphale folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb, watching Adam’s progress. He had shown Adam how to tie a tie for the first time yesterday. He itched to step in and help, but knew that he should hang back and wait for Adam to ask for it. 

“There!” Adam said triumphantly, turning to face Aziraphale and grinning. “I did it!”

“You certainly did.” Aziraphale pushed himself off the doorjamb and went over to Adam. He knelt to adjust the tie--it was a bit crooked, but all in all, a fine first attempt. “You look  _ very  _ handsome, Adam. Are you ready to go?” 

Aziraphale knew he probably shouldn’t be thinking of the Antichrist using adjectives like  _ cute  _ and  _ adorable _ , but he couldn’t help it--that was just what Adam was. Especially when they arrived at the theater, and Adam took the tickets from Aziraphale and went up on his toes to present them to the staff member behind the booth. They scanned the tickets, handed them solemnly back to Adam, and directed the two of them to the proper door. 

It was a struggle, sometimes, finding a theater production that Aziraphale could genuinely enjoy and which didn’t bore Adam to tears. There was so much  _ culture  _ he wanted to introduce Adam to, so many plays and shows and works of art. But at the same time, Adam was only seven years old, and much preferred staring at a tiny screen while he blew up his enemies, or whatever it was that happened in those video games of his. Aziraphale couldn’t push too hard, or he would risk putting Adam off the finer things in life forever. 

He thought that he had struck a nice compromise with this afternoon’s show, though. It was an adaptation of  _ Othello _ , shortened and written with children in mind. It had received a number of favorable reviews, so he thought that this matinee performance would be a nice way to introduce Adam to some Shakespeare. 

Thankfully, the show  _ was  _ a delight, though Aziraphale looked forward to the day when he could take Adam to see the actual  _ Othello _ . After, Aziraphale took Adam for some ice cream, and they strolled through the park on the way back to the bookshop so that Adam could chase the ducks. 

“Darling, leave the babies alone,” Aziraphale scolded gently as Adam set his sights on chasing a mother duck and her chicks into the water. He pivoted and chased after some of the adult males instead. “Much better, thank you.” 

“He’s a cute kid,” someone said to Aziraphale’s right, and he turned to see a human man standing there. He was tall and willowy, with shaggy black hair and wearing a leather jacket. He looked as though he’d belonged to a rock band twenty years ago and was still clinging, white-knuckled, to that identity. 

“He’s a delight,” Aziraphale said, and the man stepped closer. He held out his hand.

“Bert.”

“Ezra,” Aziraphale said, briefly shaking the man’s hand and then releasing it. 

“He’s yours, then?”

“Yes, indeed.” Aziraphale gave Bert a polite smile that he hoped conveyed finality, but the human either didn’t get the hint or willfully ignored it.

“Always had a soft spot for kids myself. Don’t have any of my own, though.”

“No?”

“Nah.” Bert shrugged. “It wasn’t in the cards.”

They chatted idly for a few minutes longer. It wasn’t that Aziraphale disliked the attention--this corporation of his hadn’t kept up with modern beauty standards, and while he’d been considered attractive in previous centuries, that attention had declined significantly in recent decades. He couldn’t deny that it felt  _ nice  _ to be chatted up by a handsome human. Not that Aziraphale would ever act on his attraction. He’d made the mistake of getting involved with humans a few times over the millennia, and it always ended in heartbreak. Their lives were far too short. 

“Adam,” Aziraphale finally called. “We need to be getting home.” 

He said a polite goodbye to Bert. The man slipped him his number anyway. Aziraphale suppressed a sigh, smiled tightly, and tucked the piece of paper in his pocket.

Adam was quiet on the way home. 

“Was that a friend of yours, Dad?”

“No,” Aziraphale said. 

“Then why was he talking to you?” 

“He was just being nice.” 

“Is that why he gave you his phone number? So he could talk to you more?”

Aziraphale sighed. Of course Adam had noticed that.

“Sometimes, when people want to date each other, they exchange phone numbers first.”

A furrow appeared between Adam’s brows. “You’re going to date him?”

“No,” Aziraphale said firmly. “I’m not interested.” 

“Good,” Adam said decisively. “I don’t want you to have a boyfriend.” 

“No?” Aziraphale asked, amused. “Why not?” 

“Because then you wouldn’t have time for me anymore.” 

Something in Aziraphale’s chest cracked clean in two. He stopped, and Adam did too, fixing him with a puzzled frown. 

“Dad?”

“Oh, dearest,” Aziraphale breathed. He dropped to his knees and took Adam by the shoulders, forcing their gazes to meet. “Listen to me. I will  _ always  _ have time for you, no matter what. I would  _ never  _ date someone who didn’t love you as much as I do. You always come first for me, understand?”

Adam dropped his eyes and scuffed his feet against the pavement. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Adam, look at me. You  _ always  _ come first.  _ I love you _ .”

“I love you, too,” Adam mumbled. 

Aziraphale didn’t know what had got into Adam lately, where these doubts were coming from. Perhaps it was merely something that human children went through at this age? He would have to consult his collection of parenting books. Perhaps he could find some answers there. 

“Good.” Aziraphale kissed his forehead and stood. He offered Adam his hand, and Adam took it. “Let’s go home, darling.” 


	2. Chapter 2

One moment, Crowley was in his atrium, inspecting his plants for any unwelcome--and _absolutely_ unacceptable--leaf spots. The next, he was sitting in someone’s bedroom. 

“Oi!” He sprang to his feet, indignant. “Just who do you think--oh, it’s you.” 

It was the same kid who had summoned him twice before. But Crowley wasn’t in the bookshop this time. He was standing in a summoning circle in the middle of the child’s bedroom. Adam had clearly made a space for the circle, all of his toys and games pushed to the walls of his room. 

“Sweet!” Adam said delightedly. “Didn’t know if it would work, y’know, drawing the circle on my own.” 

“You--wait, what?” Crowley frowned at him. “That last summoning circle, you didn’t make that one on your own?”

“Nah, it was already in Dad’s shop,” Adam said with a shrug. “He keeps it covered with a rug. Don’t think he uses it at all.”

“Your father has a summoning circle?” It was one thing for a kid to have drawn a circle and summoned him out of curiosity. It was quite another for him to come across an already-existing one. What would Adam’s father be using a summoning circle for? In Crowley’s experience, humans who went looking for ways to summon and trap demons were not the kind of humans he wanted to ever find himself at the mercy of. He needed to get out of here. “Where is he now?”

“Downstairs. Shop’s open. And I was bored, and I had some chalk, so I tried to summon you. And it worked!” 

Crowley glowered at him. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” 

“Told Dad I was sick,” Adam said cheerfully. “He thinks I’m sleeping. Say, what’s your name?”

“You know my name. That’s how you were able to summon me.” 

“I summoned you with this.” Adam drew Crowley’s name--his _real_ name, his demonic one--on a piece of paper and showed it to him. “But I can’t pronounce that. Dunno what language it is.”

“The oldest one,” Crowley said faintly. “Where did you get my name from?”

“It was in the book, too. Anyway, I gotta call you _something_.”

“Anthony,” Crowley said. No way was he giving this kid his actual name, the humanized version of his demonic one. Adam already held too much power over him by knowing the first one. 

Adam scrunched up his nose. It was kind of adorable. “Doesn’t sound like a demon name.”

“I gotta blend in among the humans. Now, what do you want? Why did you summon me?”

Adam shrugged. “Bored.” 

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have friends?”

Adam visibly bristled at that. _Interesting_. “They’re all at school.”

“You probably should have thought of that before you pretended to be sick.” 

Adam ignored the comment, jumping abruptly to a new topic. Crowley was fiercely reminded of Warlock and his short attention span. “So what’s it like, being a demon?”

Crowley sighed. He couldn’t get out of this circle on his own. He would have to wait until the kid grew bored and decided to send him home. He sat down again, cross-legged.

“S’not too bad. You go around, make some trouble, secure souls for your Lord and Master, that kind of thing. You get to wear fashionable clothes.” Crowley gestured at himself. “We’re very cool, you know.” 

“Can I be a demon?” 

“What? No! You don’t want to be a demon.”

“But it sounds fun!” Adam protested. “I’m good at trouble. Trouble’s fun. One time, I snuck worms into school and put them in my teacher’s desk. She screamed so loud when she opened the drawer!”

Crowley’s lips twitched despite himself. “Did she, now?” 

“Yeah! It was awesome, even though Dad grounded me for a month.” 

“That him?” Crowley asked, nodding to a picture on Adam’s bedside table. It was hard for him to see from across the room, but he could make out a vaguely child-sized shape that looked like Adam and one that resembled an adult. 

“Yeah!” Adam jumped up and retrieved the picture. “We went to America last year, and I got to visit Harry Potter World, and Dad even dressed up with me!” 

“What’s his name?”

“Ezra. Ezra Fell.”

Crowley contemplated the picture. Ezra Fell had indeed dressed up for the occasion, wearing Ravenclaw robes next to Adam’s Gryffindor ones (Warlock, who rarely read books, had demanded that Crowley read them all to him, and Crowley absolutely did _not_ cry at the end of the fifth one, thank you very much). Fell was a handful of inches shorter than Crowley, round and plump-cheeked, and his eyes were the most brilliant blue that Crowley had ever seen. He didn’t _look_ like a human who went around summoning demons, but Crowley knew better than anyone that looks were incredibly deceiving.

“Is it just you and your dad?” he asked. 

“Yeah. He adopted me after my parents died,” Adam said. “Say, do you wanna play a game or something?”

“I’m rubbish at video games,” Crowley said. He’d never really got the hang of having limbs and walking upright properly, never mind fine motor control and opposable thumbs. So his hand-eye coordination was pretty dismal, all told, and his sight was atrocious. Those video game graphics gave him a bitch of a headache, never mind that the colors and flashing lights confused the hell out of him. He lost spectacularly to Warlock on a constant basis during the boy’s video game phase, which had been blessedly brief before something new grabbed his attention.

“That’s alright, I have board games,” Adam said cheerfully. “How about Scrabble?”

Of course a child who had grown up in a bookshop would want to play Scrabble. Crowley sighed. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do while Warlock was at school. “Sure, fine.” 

Adam was actually a decent opponent, though his vocabulary was limited still by his age. Crowley restricted himself to modern English words only, and managed to beat Adam for three rounds straight. Sure, he probably should have gone easy on a child, but he was a _demon_ , after all. He wasn’t about to do something _nice_ like allowing Adam to win.

Adam was setting up the board for a fourth round when Crowley heard the creak of a stair. Adam heard it as well, and froze. 

“Adam?” a man’s voice floated up from downstairs. “It’s nearly lunchtime, dearest. Are you hungry?” 

And then the man started to climb the stairs, which popped and creaked with every step.

“Oh, no,” Adam whispered. He darted forward and scuffed his foot on the floor, breaking the summoning circle. 

All at once, the pressure eased from around Crowley, and he felt like himself again. He took a cautious step over the circle--and nothing happened. 

“You gotta hide,” Adam said quickly. “Under the bed.” 

“You’re kidding, right?” 

“You can’t let him see you!” 

“Adam, are you still sleeping? It’s nearly one, and you haven’t eaten all day.” The man was drawing closer to the bedroom. 

Crowley could transport himself across town--theoretically. In practice, transporting oneself wasn’t generally a good idea, and should only be used for emergencies. At best, it would deplete his powers for a week. At worst, he’d leave parts of himself behind, and that would only create more problems than it solved. 

“Bugger,” Crowley muttered, and then he hit the floor and rolled under the bed just as Adam’s door opened.

“Oh, I should have known you weren’t actually in bed,” the man--Ezra Fell, it had to be--said. He sounded disappointed, annoyed, and fond all at once. He came further into the room. Crowley could see only his brown loafers and the start of cream-colored trousers. “Goodness, Adam, what have you done to your toys? This place is a disaster.”

“Was bored,” Adam said, a shrug in his voice.

“You’re _sick_ . Of course you’re going to be bored, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with it,” Fell said. “Now back to bed, please. I’m going to bring you up some soup. Do you want anything else? And _don’t_ say candy, you know you can’t have any while you’re sick.”

The bed creaked as Adam climbed back into it, and there was a rustle as Fell arranged the blankets. 

“Some juice?” Adam asked.

“Of course, dear. Now get some rest, I’ll be back in a moment.”

He kissed Adam’s forehead and departed. Crowley waited until he returned with Adam’s food and fussed over him a bit more, and then Fell left the room for good.

“Mr Anthony.” Adam’s face appeared, upside-down. “You can come out now.” 

Crowley slid out from under the bed and stood, dusting off his jacket and straightening it. 

“That was your one free pass, kid,” he said, holding up a finger. “I’m not going to make a habit of hiding under beds. Now, if you would be so kind.”

He stepped back into the circle. Adam sighed. 

“Yeah, _fine_.” He got out of bed to fetch the chalk and re-draw the line he had scuffed, and then he pulled the book out from behind his pillow. A few incantations, and Crowley found himself flat on his back in his atrium again. 

****

Warlock begged to go to the zoo again on Saturday morning. He woke Crowley at the ungodly hour of seven, and proceeded to cajole and wheedle him for an hour until Crowley finally gave in. It wasn’t a hardship, spending time with Warlock, but Crowley had been up half the night turning the issue of Adam Fell over in his mind. (Alright, and also watching _The Golden Girls_ ). 

They were in the reptile house when a cheerful, “Hiya, Mr Anthony!” rang out. Crowley went cold all over. 

“Dad, who’s that?” Warlock asked, tugging on his sleeve. 

Crowley turned around to find Adam Fell less than two feet away, accompanied by someone who could only be his father. Ezra Fell was by far one of the strangest humans Crowley had seen in--well, at least since the ‘60s. He dressed like a stuffy librarian from the nineteenth century, complete with a worn waistcoat, cream-colored jacket, and bowtie. He wasn’t even sweating in the late-August heat. 

“Adam, I could ask you the same question.” Fell’s voice was mild, but he was eyeing Crowley with no small amount of suspicion. “Who is this?”

“This is Mr Anthony,” Adam said cheerfully. “He’s my friend.” 

Fell’s expression darkened, and he stepped protectively closer to Adam. “I see. And how did you meet this...friend?” 

“It’s not like that,” Crowley said quickly, holding up his hands. He knew what this sounded like, a grown man befriending a seven-year-old. He’d feel the same, in Fell’s shoes. “Our kids went to that science camp last summer. The one in Manchester. I met Adam on the last day, when I came to pick Warlock up. You hadn’t arrived yet.”

He’d seen a certificate in Adam’s bedroom that bore the name of the camp, and hoped it was a plausible enough lie. Thankfully, Fell visibly relaxed, and neither Adam nor Warlock protested.

“Oh.” Fell pressed a well-manicured hand to his chest. “Oh, goodness, I’m very sorry. That was terribly rude of me to...assume things.”

“Not at all.” Crowley stuck out his hand. “Anthony Crowley.”

“Ezra Fell. And...Warlock, did you say?” Fell nodded at Warlock. “That’s an unusual name.”

“Yeah, he gets that a lot.” Crowley cleared his throat. “Uh, enjoying the zoo, Adam?” 

“Yeah!” Adam said enthusiastically. “I really like the penguins! I’m gonna be a marine biologist someday.” 

“Is that right?” Crowley said, amused. 

“He _does_ love the ocean,” Fell said, casting a fond look at Adam. “What about you, Warlock? What’s your favorite part of the zoo?” 

“The reptile house,” Warlock answered without hesitation. “I like the snakes.” 

“That’s my boy,” Crowley said, ruffling his hair, and Warlock ducked away. “We should get the boys together sometime, Ezra.”

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , Crowley cursed internally. What was the point of having self-preservation instincts if he was going to blatantly ignore them at every turn? He did _not_ want to get mixed up with the Fell family. He needed to stay as far away from them as possible, if Ezra indeed had a habit of trapping demons and his son did it because he was bored. His brain was a bit useless, though, when it came to pretty humans. One look at Fell and apparently his mind had other plans for him. Stupid corporation and its _stupid_ hormones. 

Adam looked hopeful at the suggestion, but Fell’s expression immediately shuttered. He checked his watch. 

“It was lovely to meet you, Anthony, but we should be on our way. Come along, Adam.” 

Warlock was quiet for most of the way home, until he finally said, “I didn’t go to science camp last year.”

“I know,” Crowley sighed. “But thank you for not saying anything.” 

“You owe me ice cream for dinner,” Warlock said smugly, and Crowley groaned--though inwardly he was proud of his conniving boy.

“Yes, yes, _fine_ , you can have ice cream for dinner tonight.” 

“And a cat?”

Crowley glowered at him. “Don’t push your luck, kid.” 

****

Aziraphale was shelving some new books one afternoon when he noticed it. The large, circular rug that covered his summoning circle was slightly askew. It was almost imperceptible. Aziraphale only noticed it because of where he happened to be standing in the shop, and the way that the afternoon sunlight fell on it. That was odd. The rug was held in place by ethereal means; it wasn’t possible for a human to move it. There was no chance one of his customers had simply moved it out of place on accident. 

“Adam, dear,” he called. 

The boy came hurrying into the room. “Yeah, Dad?”

“Did you move this rug?” 

Adam’s brow furrowed. He looked perplexed. “No?” 

His confusion seemed to be genuine. Aziraphale might not have had the ability to rely on his angelic senses anymore, but he liked to think he was adept enough at reading his son. 

“Are you sure?” he pressed gently. “Perhaps you, ah, tripped? Or pushed it when we were hoovering last week?” 

“Don’t think so,” Adam said with a shrug. “Why?”

“Oh...nothing, dearest. You know me. Being silly.” Aziraphale offered him a smile. “How about you help me finish shelving these books, and then we’ll have some hot cocoa?” 

Adam bit his lip. He said cautiously, “Or...I could go see David?”

“Who is David?” 

“No one,” Adam said. “Jus’ a friend from school.” 

Aziraphale sighed. “Adam, we have talked about this.”

“But Dad--”

“I don’t think it’s safe,” Aziraphale said. “You’re so young, and it’s dangerous out there. Anything could happen.”

“Like what?” Adam asked, and Aziraphale paused, because Adam had never pressed before. 

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said gently.

“All my other friends get to hang out,” Adam said. There was a stubborn set to his jaw now. “You never let me visit them.” 

“I’m a bit more cautious than your friends’ parents. I promise, Adam, you’ll understand when you’re older.” 

He almost suggested that David come to the bookshop, but thankfully stopped himself before the words left his mouth. It was bad enough that he had to run his bookshop like a real business, with customers coming in and out all day. He wasn’t comfortable with the number of strangers he had to let into his life on a daily basis simply to maintain his cover. He didn’t want to invite further trouble by letting Adam’s classmates or their parents get too close. Humans were curious, they had questions, they _snooped_. No, best to stick with the original plan, and keep Adam as isolated as possible. It was for Aziraphale’s own safety as much as it was for Adam’s. He couldn’t afford for Heaven to find him out now, not after six thousand years spent carefully avoiding them.

Adam must have thought that if he waited long enough, Aziraphale might change his mind. When Aziraphale said nothing more, Adam simply sighed and said, “Okay, Dad. I can help with the books, and then we can have hot cocoa.”

“Wonderful,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “Come along, dearest, I have a new shipment of Jeffrey Archer books we need to get on the shelves.” 

****

Warlock was spending time with their neighbors downstairs one afternoon while Crowley cleaned up after lunch. The couple had moved into the unit under Crowley’s flat a year ago, and they had three cats that Warlock had taken to immediately. Crowley had hoped that spending time with the cats would lessen Warlock’s desire for one, but no, it had done just the opposite. Now, Warlock asked him for a cat of his own on almost a weekly basis. Crowley shook his head. His best-laid plans _always_ backfired on him. 

A wave of cold washed over Crowley as he reached for the towel, and then an invisible hand squeezed his chest. _Damn it,_ no, he didn’t have time for this right now!

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t resist the pull of a summoning. He blinked, and he was back inside the summoning circle in Ezra Fell’s bookshop. Adam knelt on the floor in front of him, his face streaked with tears, a piece of paper crumpled in his hands. All irritation immediately bled out of Crowley.

“Hey.” He sank into a crouch. “Adam, what happened?” 

“It’s Sophie’s birthday,” Adam said miserably, holding up his piece of paper, “an’ Dad won’t let me go to the party.” 

“Oh.” Crowley blinked. “Er, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He _never_ lets me do _anything_ !” Adam burst out. Fresh tears leaked from his eyes. “I can’t hang out with my friends, or play outside without him watching, and he never lets me go to birthday parties or swimming or _anything_ ! It’s not _fair_!” 

“He let you go to that science camp,” Crowley said weakly. 

“My teacher asked him to,” Adam muttered. “He only did it ‘cause she promised she’d be with us the whole time and wouldn’t let me out of her sight.”

“Adam,” Crowley said slowly, “why’s your dad so afraid of something happening to you?” 

“I don’t _know_ ,” Adam wept. He buried his face in his hands. 

“Where is he now?” Crowley asked. The bookshop’s lights were off and the sign on the door indicated it was closed, even though it was the middle of the day. Anxiety prickled the back of his neck. The last thing he needed was for someone to come in and catch him inside this summoning circle. Someone who likely wouldn’t be as kind--or naive--as Adam. 

“Went to go pick up some lunch,” Adam said when he could speak again. “He’ll be gone another twenty minutes, he always takes forever talking to Mrs Baker.” 

He lifted shining eyes to Crowley’s face. “Can you fix him?”

“Fix him?” Crowley echoed.

“Yeah, so he lets me go to my friends’ houses and birthday parties and camp,” Adam said. “I can make a deal with you, yeah? Demons want souls, I read about that once. You can have my soul if you make my dad be less strict.” 

“Kiddo…” Crowley trailed off. “It doesn’t work like that.”

It absolutely _did_ work like that, but Crowley wasn’t about to tell Adam that. Unlike other demons, he didn’t go in for mind control, and he didn’t want any souls for himself. He didn’t mind nudging someone in the wrong direction, getting them to give into temptation and sin, but that was only satisfying when there was an underlying desire there already. He didn’t outright fuck with human brains. 

Adam’s lower lip trembled. Ugh, it was bad enough when Warlock cried. Crowley couldn’t cope with sad children, he absolutely _could not_. 

“Listen,” he said desperately, “your dad thinks I’m human. Right? He thinks that you and Warlock are friends. What if I talk to him, yeah? As a human, not like this. I could come by the bookshop one day and we could have a chat. One dad to another. I can make him see reason.” 

Adam paused to consider this. 

“I suppose,” he said, though he sounded unconvinced. 

“Great,” Crowley said, clapping his hands together. “That’s sorted. How about you let me out of this circle, and I’ll--” 

**“He will do no such thing.”**

The booming voice shocked the Hell out of Crowley. He felt it in his bones, and the power of it knocked him flat on his arse. Through a haze of pain, Crowley squinted and saw the absolute _last_ thing he wanted to deal with right now.

_An angel._

No, his mind told him in confusion. No, this was Ezra Fell, this was Adam’s _father_ \--

His brain chose that moment to kick into gear, and he realized that both those things were true. Ezra Fell, Adam’s father, was an _angel_.

Oh, _bugger_. 

**“Demon, what is your purpose here?”** Fell had too many eyes. It was the only thing Crowley could think as he gazed stupidly at the man--angel. His wings were out, his previously-hidden aura crackled around him, and he had _too many eyes._

“Uh,” was all Crowley could manage. 

Fell’s eyes-- _all_ of them--narrowed. He snapped his fingers. 

The floor beneath Crowley started to writhe and undulate. A powerful wind kicked up inside the summoning circle, buffeting him on all sides. He grew warm--very warm, _too_ warm--and pressure started to build inside his head.

 _No no no no--_

“Dad, wait!” Through the haze of pain, Crowley heard Adam’s panicked shout. “You can’t kill him!”

 **“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,”** the angel said, voice calm despite the utter fury that rolled off him.

“He’s my friend!” Adam sounded like he was on the verge of weeping again. “Please don’t hurt him!” 

The tempest died away almost as quickly as it had come, leaving Crowley gasping on the floor in the middle of the summoning circle. When he dared to look up and meet Fell’s eyes, he saw the human-looking-once-again angel scowling down at him.

“You are very lucky,” Fell said, “that my son is far kinder than I am.”


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley couldn’t _believe_ he had managed to get captured by an angel. It was one thing to be summoned by Satanists and children. It was another to walk right into an angel’s trap without even realizing it. 

He was bad at being a demon, but he wasn’t _that_ bad at being a demon. 

“Bloody Hell!” He jumped to his feet and jabbed his finger at the angel indignantly. “Just who do you think you are, using a kid to trap a demon? That’s rude, that is. S’against the rules of engagement.”

Fell arched an unamused eyebrow at him.

“I have done no such thing,” he said primly, and then turned to said child. “Adam, are you hurt?” 

“No, Dad.” Adam sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. Fell pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and gently dried Adam’s tears, then gave it to him to blow his nose. 

“There, now. Nothing to be frightened of, love. Go wait for me upstairs while I take care of our...visitor.”

Adam looked alarmed. “Dad, no--”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Fell said, and Crowley could tell the angel was lying through his teeth. “Upstairs, please.” 

“But--”

“ _Now_ ,” Fell said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Adam sighed, but turned and trudged upstairs. 

The angel, it turned out, was a bit of a bastard. He left the room, and returned with a chair and a drink. He pulled the chair up to the edge of the summoning circle and sat in it, crossing his legs and balancing a glass of whiskey on his knee. He didn’t offer any to Crowley, of course. _Rude_.

“Tell me, demon,” he said. “What do you want with my son?” 

“What do you mean, _what do I want with your son_?” Crowley sputtered. “He’s the one who keeps summoning me!” 

“Yes, he does, and I would like to know why.” 

“Ask _him_ that!” 

“You’ve been influencing him,” the angel said. 

“I have _not_ ,” Crowley said indignantly. “I don’t go for mind control, alright? M’not that kind of demon, for Hell’s sake.” 

Fell lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “I didn’t realize that demons had _standards_.” 

“This demon bloody well does,” Crowley muttered. “Adam got it in his own head to summon me, and it’s not like I have the ability to resist a summoning. He got it from a book. I assume one of yours.” 

Fell paled, but otherwise didn’t let on that this surprised him. 

“We met before, at the zoo,” he said finally. “You had a child with you. You called him your son. Tell me, how exactly does a demon come to raise a human child?” 

“How does an angel come to raise one?” Crowley countered. “What poor human couple did you steal Adam from, hm? I know he’s not yours, not biologically. Everyone knows what happens when an angel creates a child with a human.” 

Fell winced. The nephilim were still a touchy subject for Upstairs, it seemed.

“Adam’s an orphan,” he said after a moment. “I’m all he has.” 

He tilted his head, considering Crowley, and then he said, “I thought I knew the names of all of Hell’s agents. Yours isn’t one I recognize. How long have you been stationed on Earth?” 

“None of your bloody business,” Crowley muttered petulantly. 

“It becomes my business when you show up in my shop, threatening my child.”

“Threaten--angel, I’m telling you, I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here! I’m not trying to hurt Adam!” Crowley said heatedly. “Look, just send me back, and we can forget about the whole thing.” 

Fell gave a short, humorless laugh. “A demon now knows where I live, knows my face, knows my son’s face, and expects me to do nothing? Just set him free, and forget about the whole thing? I don’t think so.”

“Wait a minute.” Crowley, too, had known about all the angelic agents stationed on Earth. He’d run into them at one point or another over the centuries. It was bound to happen, on a planet as small as this one and after six thousand years. But rumors had persisted through the millennia about one angel in particular, one that couldn’t be accounted for after the humans left Eden. “Oh, shit. I know who you are.” 

The angel’s expression didn’t change, but Crowley saw his spine straighten slightly. “I’m sure that you don’t.” 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and the name sent a shudder down his spine. “Guardian of the Eastern Gate. No one’s heard from you in millennia. We all thought you’d Fallen.” 

“I think you must be mistaking me for a different angel--”

“No, it’s you, I’m sure of it.” Crowley had only caught a brief glimpse of that angel while in Eden, but he remembered his pale hair, which surrounded his head like a halo when the sun hit it just right. “Hell claims you as one of ours, did you know that? Upper Management has never confirmed it, but they don’t deny it, either. Rumor has it you’re in charge of torturing souls in the deepest pit.”

“I see,” the angel said calmly, though it was clear that this unnerved him. 

“But none of it’s true, is it? You’ve been up here all this time.” Astounding, that he had managed to evade Hell’s surveillance for all these millennia. Beelzebub had never quashed the rumors that Hell had gained another Fallen angel in the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, which told Crowley that the Prince of Hell was just as frightened of this mysterious angel as the lower-ranked demons were. “You had a flaming sword, didn’t you? What happened to it?” 

Aziraphale said nothing for a moment. Then, he tipped back his glass and swallowed the rest of the whiskey at once. 

“I gave it away,” he said.

“You _what_?” Crowley gaped at him. 

“The humans were being cast out of the Garden. They were going to be cold, hungry, and defenseless. The flaming sword wasn’t much, but it was something.” 

Crowley couldn’t believe this. One of Heaven’s soldiers had given away his flaming sword to a couple of _humans_ against the Almighty’s orders? 

“Your superiors can’t have been too pleased with that,” he said.

“No. They weren’t. That is why I’ve been on the run from them for six thousand years,” Aziraphale said. “And also why I can’t set you free. You know too much. I am sorry, for what it’s worth.” 

Crowley cast around wildly for something, _anything_ he could say that would prevent this angel from smiting him for good. Of course, when he opened his mouth, the worst phrase imaginable tumbled out: “Adam’s not the Antichrist.”

Aziraphale gazed at him steadily. The only sign of shock he gave was the slight widening of his eyes.

“I beg your pardon.” 

“Adam’s not the Antichrist,” Crowley repeated. Well, in for a penny, and all that. “That’s why you’re raising him, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care for this implication at all--”

“He was born on the seventeenth of August, seven years ago,” Crowley said quickly. He was grasping at straws, but then, he wasn’t one to believe in pure coincidence. The fact that their sons shared a birthday? That was bloody _weird_ , that was. “He was born in Tadfield, wasn’t he? You kidnapped him from the hospital that night, didn’t you, thinking he was the Antichrist. Dunno why, but I’m going to guess it’s the same reason as me: you want to avert the Apocalypse.” 

“The same reason as you,” Aziraphale repeated quietly.

“See, trouble is, _I’ve_ got the Antichrist. I was responsible for delivering him to the hospital that night, and swapping him with the baby of the American ambassador.” 

“I see,” Aziraphale said. His voice was steady and calm, but his corporation had lost all the blood in its face. “So, the Antichrist….was not born of a human woman.”

“No, he manifested in Hell. The nuns at the hospital were supposed to get rid of the extra baby, but I told them I was going to do it myself.” There was no need to tell Aziraphale that he _had_ gone through with the baby swap, only to double back to the hospital when he changed his mind. “I took Warlock home instead.”

Aziraphale lifted a brow. “You named the Antichrist _Warlock_?”

“Ngk--long story.” Crowley shook his head. “What’d you do, then? Just...popped into a hospital, stole a baby from its parents, and popped out again?”

“I’m not so completely heartless as all that,” Aziraphale said stiffly. “I thought that the Antichrist was going to be grown in the womb of a human woman, the same as Her Son. My... _intel_ told me that the child in question was going to be born to one Dierdre Young. I took an orphaned infant with me that night, and swapped them out. The parents are none the wiser. They’re a lovely family, and that child wants for nothing.” 

“Well, I’m afraid you kidnapped their child and wasted seven years for nothing,” Crowley said. “Adam’s not the Antichrist.” 

“Why are you certain Warlock is?”

“Because I was _there_ , angel!”

“Wait a minute.” Aziraphale narrowed his eyes again. “Why did _you_ try to kidnap the Antichrist? You’re a demon.” 

“First of all, I didn’t _try_ , I _succeeded_ ,” Crowley said indignantly. “Second of all, have you _seen_ the Earth? It’s green, it’s vibrant, it’s alive! There are crepes and funny plays and _alcohol_ and warm baths and memory foam mattresses and mobile phones. You think we have any of that in Hell? So, yeah, I kidnapped the Antichrist, and if I raise him right, he won’t end all the things I like about this world.” 

Silence descended for several uncomfortable seconds. Aziraphale’s cool facade finally seemed to be cracking. He looked worn, tired, and immensely worried.

“I know what you mean,” he said quietly. “Heaven’s nothing like this, either. It’s...sterile. There’s no good theater, there’s certainly no food, and forget trying to get a decent glass of wine. I don’t want this to end.” 

Crowley never thought he’d meet an angel he actually _agreed_ with. Most angels wanted him dead, and quite frankly, he felt the same about them. But this one was...different. Unusual, to say the least. 

“The fact of the matter is, this complicates things,” Aziraphale went on. “You think Warlock is the Antichrist. I believe Adam is. As sure as we are of this, one of us is going to be wrong in the end. There’s no way we can be certain we’re right, not until….things start to happen.” 

“We’ve got four years,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s shocked gaze snapped to him.

“ _Four_ years? What are you talking about? 

“Oh, you wouldn’t know, would you?” Crowley said. “Sorry, it’s just...Hell’s been planning this for a long time. The Antichrist, whoever he is, will come into his powers on his eleventh birthday. That’s the day the world begins to end.” 

“Eleven…” Aziraphale said faintly. “Goodness. I thought--I thought I would have more time with him. That certain events wouldn’t start until he had at least reached adulthood…”

“Nah, it’s gotta happen when he’s still a kid,” Crowley said. “Kids are way more powerful than adults. The Antichrist has the power to bend and shape all of reality. He’s stronger right now than he would be fully grown.” 

He caught sight of the clock on the wall, and sighed again. 

“Look, we have a lot more to talk about, but I’ve already been gone longer than I intended, and Warlock’s probably worried sick. Can we pick this up another time?” 

Aziraphale stiffened again, the hard resolve coming back into his eyes. 

“Look, we’re on the same side,” Crowley said quickly. “You don’t want the Apocalypse to happen, I don’t want the Apocalypse to happen. They say that two heads are better than one, right? So let’s work together on this. We’ve got less than four years until the End Times. It doesn’t make sense for us to keep working alone. Less efficient that way.” 

The angel stood, clutching his empty glass in a white-knuckled grip. Crowley instinctively took a step back.

“Tomorrow,” Aziraphale said. “The Ritz, eight o’clock. Let’s...discuss things. But if I doubt your sincerity, even for a moment, I will not hesitate to destroy you. My priorities are this world, and Adam. You will not threaten either of them.”

“Right, yeah, ‘course,” Crowley said quickly. He could probably find a babysitter for Warlock for tomorrow night. Mrs Evans, who lived a floor below them, was likely free. “Eight o’clock, got it. I’ll be there.” 

Aziraphale considered him for another endless moment, and then snapped his fingers. Crowley opened his eyes, and found himself lying on the floor of the kitchen.

****

Aziraphale spent several minutes downstairs, trying to compose himself. It wasn’t like him to lose control like that. He could count on one hand the number of times he had relied on his powers in the past six thousand years. He couldn’t afford for Heaven to notice an unexpected blip on their radar and come looking for him, so he had to be exceedingly careful about it. 

One measly demon. That was all it had taken to break his self-control. He had been prepared to smite the demon then and there, and probably would have if not for Adam. And then he had squandered a miracle to send the demon away, back where he’d come from. He doubted that one miracle would draw Heaven’s attention, especially against the background noise of all the souls in Soho, but he couldn’t risk losing control like that again. 

And now he needed to talk to Adam.

He had been hoping to avoid this conversation for a while yet. He wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever, because eventually Adam was bound to notice that his father didn’t age. But he should have had ten, maybe even fifteen years until it started to look suspicious. He drew a bracing breath, and went upstairs.

Adam was in his room, in bed, his back to the door. He didn’t react when Aziraphale knocked on the doorframe, nor when Aziraphale entered and sat down carefully on the mattress.

“Adam,” Aziraphale said gently. “Can you look at me, please?”

Adam rolled over. He scowled up at Aziraphale. 

“What _are_ you?” he demanded, and Aziraphale couldn’t deny that stung a bit.

“I’m an angel,” he said. There was no point in pretending the boy hadn’t seen that spectacle downstairs. “And your... _friend,_ Mr Anthony, is a demon.” 

“I don’t believe you,” Adam said. “You’re not an angel, you’re my _dad_.” 

“Both of those things can be true,” Aziraphale said gently. “Here, I can show you.” 

He manifested his wings with a _whoosh_ , which was poor foresight on his part, because he ended up knocking Adam’s bedside lamp to the floor. It shattered on impact. “Oh, dear.” 

“Whoa,” Adam said. He sat up. “So you’re _not_ human.”

“I’m afraid not, my boy.” 

Adam frowned. “Then...why are you my dad? I’m human. Aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said quickly. “Of course you are. You’re human, and your parents are gone. I haven’t lied to you about that. It’s only….I have always wanted a child, Adam. I know that must seem strange, an angel wanting a baby, but it’s true. Raising you has been the greatest joy of my life.” 

Adam looked away. “Do angels die?”

“Not...not in the way that you think. Not like humans,” Aziraphale admitted. “Sometimes...sometimes bad things happen, and we get destroyed. But not often.” 

“So you’re going to live forever,” Adam said. “And I’m going to die.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said faintly. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider this, not in the nine years he’d been raising Adam. “I--well. Yes. But not for many years.”

“Is that why you’re too afraid to let me have friends?” Adam asked, and Aziraphale’s heart plummeted. “You don’t want them to find out what you are?”

“I--I don’t want you to be friendless, Adam,” Aziraphale stammered, taken aback. “I want you to have friends, of course I do. I just think we must be very careful…” 

He trailed off uncertainly. Adam gave him a dubious look.

“I am sorry, my boy,” Aziraphale said quietly. “I only want to keep you safe. There is nothing more important to me in the world than you.” 

Adam sniffed. “Am I ever gonna see Mr Anthony again?” 

Aziraphale grimaced. “Unfortunately, yes, I believe that you will.” 

“Good,” Adam said. “I like him.” 

_So do I_. The alarming thought came to Aziraphale unbidden. He shoved it away. He had more important things to worry about right now, and keeping Adam safe was at the top of that list.

****

Crowley had never been to the Ritz before. 

He spent half an hour trying to figure out what to wear, and another half-hour fiddling with his hair and lining his eyes.

“Are you going on a _date_?” Warlock demanded, suddenly appearing at Crowley’s side in the bathroom and causing him to botch his eyeliner.

“ _No_ ,” Crowley said firmly. He grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed away the squiggly line. “It’s for work, remember? I’m meeting a client.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Warlock said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “When will you be back?” 

“Eleven,” Crowley said. Whatever he and Aziraphale needed to hash out, they could do it in three hours. “You’ll be asleep by then.”

“Will not.” 

“Yes, you will,” Crowley said. Warlock rarely managed to stay up past ten. “But I promise I’ll come in and say goodnight to you anyway.”

“Okay,” Warlock said. He sounded a little sullen, a little resigned. Then he frowned. “Did you use my nail polish?” 

Crowley had opted for blood-red nails tonight instead of his usual black. They matched the red tie that accented his black suit, and were--he hoped--just slightly intimidating. 

“Oi, don’t give me that,” he said, poking Warlock’s nose. “You spent a year stealing my makeup, Hellspawn. You can let me use yours for a night.” 

“ _Fine_ ,” Warlock sighed. “Can we go to the museum this weekend?”

“Sure, baby, whatever you want.” Crowley kissed his forehead, then ruffled his hair. “Come on. Mrs Evans will be here any minute.” 

****

Crowley quickly came to realize that this strange angel he’d met was a hedonist of the highest order. 

He’d started to get that impression from the second time he laid eyes on Aziraphale. Once the other being had stopped his avenging angel impression and sank back into his corporation, he was dressed in a cream-colored, soft cardigan that covered the gentle swell of his stomach. He kept a well-stocked alcohol cabinet, and every piece of furniture in the bookshop was cushioned and soft and covered with plush pillows.

And, Crowley now knew, the angel _loved_ food. 

More alarming was the way _he_ was responding to watching the angel eat. Every bite elicited a soft hum of pleasure, or a happy sigh, or a delighted wiggle that sent a bolt of heat through Crowley’s belly. Crowley couldn’t look away. It was _intoxicating_.

“Mm, well, that was _scrumptious_ ,” Aziraphale said at last, having finished both his dessert and Crowley’s. “Thank you for indulging me, dear fellow. I admit that I haven’t had an excuse to come here in quite some time, so you provided me with the perfect opportunity. Now, let’s discuss things, shall we?”

“Ngk,” was all Crowley could manage. “I mean. Yeah, we should. Discuss things.”

 _Somebody_ help him, he needed to pull himself together. And then he needed to go out and get laid. 

“I’ve been thinking about your proposal that we work together,” Aziraphale said. “Much as it pains me to admit it, I think it’s a good idea. One of us has the Antichrist. We might not know who until the boys turn eleven, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep working toward our common goal.” 

“Raising them to respect all living things and hope that they don’t end all of creation when they turn eleven?” 

“Precisely. I’m not concerned about Adam, but I do fear for the child you’re raising.” 

“Excuse me?” Crowley said, indignant. “What the hell are you implying, angel?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m _telling_ you outright that I don’t believe a demon is capable of raising a child who can resist his evil tendencies.” 

“Well, that’s fucking rude,” Crowley muttered. He swallowed the rest of the wine in his glass and poured some more.

“Don’t take it personally. You can’t help what you are,” Aziraphale said. “That’s why I’d like to propose taking Warlock in.” 

Crowley’s eyebrows shot up. “As in, you want to raise him?”

“It would hardly be a hardship. I can convert my office into another bedroom, and the bookshop generates more than enough income for the three of us to be comfortable--”

“ _No_ ,” Crowley snapped. “I’m not giving up my child, not to anyone, but _especially_ not to an angel. How _dare_ you?”

“But he’s not…” Aziraphale faltered, looking slightly bewildered. “Anthony, he’s not your child.”

“He is in every way that counts.” Honestly, the nerve of this angel! “Adam’s not _your_ child.” 

“He certainly is!” Aziraphale said, indignant. 

“I’ve raised Warlock from birth. He’s as much mine as Adam is yours. There’s no difference between our situations!”

“But…” Aziraphale trailed off. “Anthony, you’re a _demon_.” 

“So, what, I’m incapable of--of forming attachments?”

“That is rather the definition of a demon, isn’t it?” Aziraphale asked. “Angels are beings full of love. Demons, by definition, are the opposite.” 

“Look, I have better things to do than sit here and listen to you insult me all night,” Crowley snapped. It hurt more than he liked to admit, this angel accusing him of not being a proper parent to Warlock. “Either we help each other out, or we go our separate ways and spend the next four years trying to thwart the Apocalypse on our own. I thought the two of us working together might actually stand a chance of success, but if you’re going to be a bastard about it--”

“Alright, alright.” Aziraphale held up his hands. “My apologies. I suppose my point is, if Warlock is actually the Antichrist, it can’t hurt for him to have some Heavenly influence in his life, can it?”

Begrudgingly, Crowley admitted that Aziraphale had a point. “I guess. And that kid of yours is in serious need of a friend. I suppose I could bring Warlock around once in a while. He can meet Adam, hang out at the bookshop, soak up your Heavenly influence or whatever.”

“Adam has friends,” Aziraphale said. 

“Yeah, sure, that’s why he was summoning a _literal, actual demon_ for companionship,” Crowley said. “If we’re going to argue about parenting tactics, I’d say that keeping your child locked up in the bookshop for the entirety of his childhood is a pretty questionable choice.”

“It’s not _safe_ out there,” Aziraphale hissed. “I can’t use miracles, because Heaven would immediately find me. If I can’t use miracles, I can’t build wards, and I certainly can’t put a layer of protection over Adam that will keep him safe when he ventures out into the world. The best thing I can do is keep him close by my side. He’s safer that way.” 

“Safer, maybe, but he’s miserable. Don’t you see that? For Satan’s sake, he summoned me on his _birthday_ because he wanted someone to play with!”

Aziraphale opened and closed his mouth several times, and finally managed, “I didn’t know that.”

“You’d gone to bed, he said.” Crowley checked his watch, and blessed under his breath. “I need to go. I promised him I’d be back by eleven. Can I give you a ride to the bookshop?”

“There’s still so much more we need to discuss--”

“Yeah, I know, but I made Warlock a promise and I’m not going to break it,” Crowley said. He snapped his fingers to manifest a pen and piece of paper, and scribbled his number on it. “Here, this is my mobile. Let’s meet again sometime this week.” 

****

Aziraphale paid the babysitter, called her a cab, and saw her safely into the car before closing up the shop and retiring upstairs. 

Adam was still awake. He was sprawled on his bed, playing a game on one of those hand-held devices, and he looked up when Aziraphale knocked lightly on the doorframe. 

“Did you have a good evening?” he asked. Adam brightened. 

“Yeah! She was cool. We played some games. I let her win a couple of times.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “What a gentleman you are.” 

“How d’you like Mr Anthony?” 

“He’s...interesting.” Aziraphale went over to the bed and perched on it. “You know that the summoning needs to stop, right? It’s very old, very dangerous magic that you’re playing with. You’re very lucky it was a demon like Mr Anthony you summoned, and not someone worse.”

“Yeah,” Adam said dejectedly. “I know. So am I never gonna see him again?”

“I didn’t say that. I believe we will be seeing a good deal more of him, in fact. But we will do the polite thing and call him on the phone, instead of summoning him. Understood?”

“Yes, Dad.” 

Aziraphale ran his fingers through Adam’s unruly hair.

“Dearest, are you happy?” he asked quietly. 

Adam frowned. “Yes?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“I am.” 

“You know you can always tell me if something is upsetting you or making you sad.”

“Yeah, Dad, I know.” 

Aziraphale considered him for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Then don’t stay up too late, and sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He kissed Adam’s forehead, and departed.


	4. Chapter 4

Crowley waited three days before getting in touch with Aziraphale. He didn’t want to seem too eager, but fuck, they weren’t dating! This was strictly business. It was the end of the world they were talking about, and plans had to be made. He looked up the bookshop’s number on the Internet, and called it. 

“A. Z. Fell and Company, can I help you?” a child’s voice said over the line. 

“Hullo, Adam. It’s your favorite demon.” Crowley held his mobile clamped between his shoulder and ear while he stirred a pot on the stove. 

“Hi, Mr Anthony!” Adam said brightly. And then his voice dimmed somewhat as he said, “You want Dad, yeah?”

“In a minute, but I’d rather talk to you first,” Crowley said. This poor kid. “How’s school going for you?”

Adam prattled on for several minutes about school, his classes, his classmates, and the latest video game Aziraphale had purchased for him. Crowley listened raptly, interjecting the appropriate comment here and there, and finally said, “I need to talk to your dad, kid, okay?”

“Okay!” Adam said, more cheerful than he’d been earlier, and went off to find Aziraphale.

“How did you get this number?” was the first thing Aziraphale said when he came on the line.

“It’s called the Internet, angel. Haven’t you heard of it?”

“Oh. Yes, of course. Did you need something?”

“What do you say to dinner on Friday? I can pick up some takeaway and bring Warlock to the shop. You and I can plan, and the boys can play.” 

“I suppose that would be fine,” Aziraphale said, with the resigned air of someone who had run out of plausible excuses to get out of an unpleasant task.

“Great. How does seven sound?”

****

Despite Crowley’s tendency to see speed limits as nothing more than suggestions, he never sped with Warlock in the car. The Bentley wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to--once he’d tried to go a few miles over the limit to pass another car, and the Bentley had flat-out refused. She also made him listen to ABBA for a week after that, and he’d had to practically beg her to bring back Freddie Mercury.

Warlock sat beside him in sulky silence. He’d been perfectly content to stay at home, with his books and his television programs and his computer. The last thing he wanted to do was spend an evening hanging out with a kid he didn’t even know. Crowley appeased him somewhat with the promise of ice cream when they got home at the end of the evening, but that was still hours away.

When they arrived at the shop, Crowley miracled up a parking spot that hadn’t been there before (Warlock was looking out the other window and didn’t notice) and pulled smoothly into it. 

“You gonna be on your best behavior?”

Warlock scowled at him. “You always tell me to make sure I’m on my _worst_ behavior.”

“Yeah, well, tonight I want you _actually_ on your best behavior. Mr Fell’s an important client.” 

Warlock sighed. “Fine, Dad.” 

Adam greeted them at the door.

“Dad, Mr Anthony’s here!” he called over his shoulder. “Hiya, Mr Anthony. What’d you bring for dinner? Hi, Warlock! D’you like video games?”

Warlock blinked at the enthusiastic ball of energy that was Adam Fell. “Not really.”

Adam’s face fell, and Crowley said, “ _Yes_ , you do. Remember?”

He gave Warlock a meaningful look, and Warlock sighed. 

“Yeah, I do,” he said unenthusiastically. Adam brightened.

“Great! C’mon, I’ve got _loads_ of games to show you.”

“You may show him your video games _after_ dinner, Adam.” Aziraphale came out of the back room. He was dressed today in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, looking impossibly charming and as though he had stepped out of the nineteenth century. “Anthony. Thank you for bringing dinner. Hello again, Warlock.”

He held out his hand; Warlock shook it.

“Hi, Mr Fell,” he said softly.

“It’s good to meet you properly, dear boy.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley. “Well. Shall we?”

Dinner was tense and awkward. Very little was spoken. Adam made a valiant attempt at conversation, which Crowley tried to participate in, but every time he engaged with the boy, Aziraphale shot him a murderous glare. Finally, Crowley gave up.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “We don’t need to make the kids sit through this farce.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Yes, fine. Boys, take your dinner and go upstairs, please.”

“Can we eat in front of the TV?” Adam asked hopefully.

“Yes, you may,” Aziraphale said, and the boys quickly disappeared upstairs. Crowley gave up the pretense of eating and tossed his napkin on the table. 

“Alcohol?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow at Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale considered him for a moment, then gestured in the direction of the cabinet in the corner of the room. “Pick a bottle of wine, would you. Your choice.”

Crowley chose a red, poured them each a generous glass, and brought it over to Aziraphale.

“Aren’t you going to finish your dinner?” Aziraphale said as Crowley settled back in his chair, content to sip his glass and watch Aziraphale eat. 

“Nah, don’t need to and I don’t particularly care for food. I eat to keep up appearances around Warlock.”

“You don’t like food?” Aziraphale asked, sounding slightly scandalized. 

“Not really, though occasionally I get a hankering for a mouse. It’s the latent snake in me, I suppose. I don’t usually indulge in consumption, except for this.” He held up his glass.

Aziraphale had gone pale. “You’re a snake.” 

“Only sometimes.”

“When you said you’d been in the garden, I didn’t think…” Aziraphale drew a deep breath. “You’re the one they called Crawly.” 

Crowley winced. “It’s _Crowley_ now, actually.”

“You’re the Serpent of Eden.” 

“Yeah, that’s me.”

Aziraphale huffed. “So you’re the reason we’re in this mess in the first place!”

“This mess called Earth? With its humans and its television programmes and its plays and its food and its _books_? Yeah, if that’s what you call a mess, sure! I’ll take credit for it. You seem to have enjoyed it these past six thousand years, enough that you don’t want Heaven to end it.” Crowley took a long swallow of wine. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this. “But no one forced Eve to eat that apple, angel, not even me. A couple of words hissed into her ear, that’s all. She did the rest, because she already _wanted_ to. _That’s_ what temptation is. And I don’t see what’s so bad about people knowing the difference between right and wrong, anyway.” 

Aziraphale scowled at him, but seemed to not know what to say. He settled for drinking his wine instead, and Crowley drained his glass. 

“How’d Adam take the news?” he asked finally, reaching for the bottle to pour more wine. “You being an angel?”

“As well as could be expected.” Aziraphale grimaced. “Wanted to know if that made me immortal, and then pointed out that he was going to die before me.”

“Went right for the throat with that one, didn’t he?” Crowley said, cold settling in his gut. He didn’t allow himself to contemplate the fact that Warlock was mortal, and that a human lifespan was barely more than a blink of an eye to an immortal being, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

“Mm. Children can be rather ruthless and cruel, can’t they. Especially when they don’t mean it. Does Warlock know?”

“No.”

“You’re going to have to tell him eventually.” 

Crowley made a non-committal noise. “So how’ve you done it, then? Survive for six thousand years as a human, without attracting Heaven’s attention. You still have your powers.”

“Yes, but I’ve suppressed them. They can be called upon, as you’ve seen, but I only rely on them on very rare occasions. It would light me up like a beacon, and Heaven would find me immediately.” 

“Weird, don’t you think.”

“What’s weird?” Aziraphale asked, pinning Crowley in place with his piercing blue eyes. 

“That you didn’t Fall,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale visibly flinched. “You disobeyed God. You gave away the flaming sword. You lied. You fled. And yet you still have your Grace.” 

Aziraphale drained his glass. “If God were truly angry with me, if She wanted me punished, She could have found me long ago. I can only assume that this has all been part of Her plan.” 

“What, you think God _wanted_ you to give away your sword, cut yourself off from Heaven, and go on the run?” 

“Everything in my existence has led up to this moment,” Aziraphale said. “Raising Adam. Averting the Apocalypse. Yes, I believe that the Almighty has let me go unpunished all these years because this is what was meant to happen.”

Crowley shook his head. “That’s ridiculous, angel. Makes no bloody sense.”

“The Plan isn’t supposed to. That’s why it’s ineffable.” 

“Was making friends with a demon part of the Plan, too?”

“We are not _friends_ ,” Aziraphale spluttered indignantly. “I don’t even like you!”

Crowley grinned. “Yes, you do.” 

There was a loud _thud_ from upstairs. They both looked up instinctively, and Aziraphale had only just opened his mouth to call upstairs when Adam shouted, “It’s okay, Dad! We’re fine!” 

“How reassuring,” Aziraphale muttered, and Crowley snorted. “More wine?” 

“Please.” 

Aziraphale summoned another bottle with a flick of his wrist, and Crowley lifted both eyebrows. Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

“Barely counts as a miracle,” he muttered as he refreshed their glasses. “Upstairs won’t be able to distinguish it from the regular background noise of human prayers.” 

Crowley snorted and took another swallow of wine. This ridiculous, prim, hedonistic angel. So at odds with what he knew about Heaven’s soldiers, and what little he remembered of Heaven itself. It had been such a sterile, suffocating place. And yet, somehow, it had produced this magnificent creature.

 _Shit._ He went cold with the horror of a dawning realization. No, _no_. He was _not_ attracted to this angel. Absolutely not. It was out of the question. 

“How long have you lived in Mayfair?” 

Crowley came back to reality with a jolt, and struggled to regain the conversational thread. “Since the ‘60s. Have you been in Soho long?” 

“Oh, since the turn of the century.”

Crowley lifted an eyebrow at him. “Which one?”

“The nineteenth. I bought this place in 1799. It opened the following year.”

“You’ve been here all this time?”

“It’s not that difficult, really,” Aziraphale said. “I usually get away with it for several decades at a time by pretending to be my own son or grandson. If people start getting too suspicious, then I shutter the shop and move away for a few decades. I come back once they have all passed on.” 

“Clever of you.” Crowley had done the same thing once or twice, but more often than not he simply moved on to a new location and never returned. He wasn’t tied to any one place the way the angel seemed to be. “And how precisely does an angel cut off from the Host and on the run from Heaven find out about the Antichrist?” 

“Do let me keep _some_ secrets, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured, and a jolt of electricity went straight down Crowley’s spine at _my dear_. “Anyway, I thought we were here to discuss business.” 

“Right.” Crowley sat up, straightening out his slouch. “We go about this one of two ways. The first way is, we part after this evening and never see each other again. You raise your Antichrist, I raise mine, and hopefully one of us manages to avert Armageddon. You keep mum about Warlock, and I won’t tell my side about the rogue angel living in Soho.”

“While I will refrain from telling your side about the fact that their agent swapped out the Antichrist with a normal human child,” Aziraphale finished. “And option two is that we work together to avert Armageddon. Work our influence on both boys, and hopefully cancel each other out so at the end of this we end up with an Antichrist who doesn’t want to destroy Earth and humanity.”

“I have to say, I like that option better.”

“Mm. Reluctant as I am to admit it, I agree,” Aziraphale said. “Working with a demon is hardly something I’m thrilled about, but needs must. How do you propose we go about doing this?”

“Hadn’t got that far, to be honest,” Crowley said. “Thought I’d bring Warlock around here and there to absorb your angelic influence or whatever. Maybe a few times a month? And I can teach Adam all kinds of wicked things, balance out the Good you’ve been filling his head with for the past nine years.” 

“You are _not_ going to corrupt my son, thank you,” Aziraphale said sternly. 

“Your son has the same capacity for evil as he does for good. The same is true for Warlock,” Crowley said. “The point of all this is that, when the time comes, they will _choose_ not to act on that evil and destroy humanity. But the choice is key. You _know_ that.” 

Silence descended, broken only by the steady tick of the grandfather clock in the corner. 

“Is there anything else I should know?” Aziraphale said finally. “About the End Times, I mean. I have rather been out of the loop, as you can imagine.” 

Crowley took another swallow of wine while he considered this. “There’s going to be a Hellhound.” 

“A what?” Aziraphale gaped at him.

“At three in the afternoon, on the day of the Antichrist’s eleventh birthday, a Hellhound will come to him. He will name the beast, and that will set the events of the Apocalypse into motion,” Crowley said. “If we’re lucky, he’ll send the Hellhound away, and thereby avert Armageddon.” 

“Adam loves dogs,” Aziraphale said morosely. “Well, _bugger_.” 

“Good thing he’s not the Antichrist, then,” Crowley said. “Warlock’s been begging me for a cat for ages now. He doesn’t even give dogs a second look when we go to the park.” 

At that moment, there came a pounding of footsteps down the stairs, and then Adam burst into the backroom.

“Hey, Dad!” He hurried over to Aziraphale and clambered into his lap. “Look at this.” 

He had some sort of gaming device in his hands--truthfully, Crowley had lost track after the Game Boy, as Warlock hadn’t shown much interest in such devices--and tilted the screen so Aziraphale could see. 

“Goodness,” Aziraphale said, and to his credit, he _did_ sound incredibly interested. Crowley would wager he had absolutely no idea what Adam was showing him, though. “That’s quite remarkable, my dear.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty neat.” 

Aziraphale pressed a kiss to Adam’s unruly locks, then said, “Where’s Warlock, dearest?”

“He fell asleep,” Adam said, still focused on his game. 

Crowley looked at his watch and realized that it was already after eleven. “Ah, shit. We need to get going. I didn’t realize how late it was.” 

He sobered up with a snap. Adam didn’t even notice the wine bottle refilling itself. 

“He’s in Dad’s office,” Adam told Crowley without looking up from his device. 

Crowley lifted an eyebrow at Aziraphale, who said, “Up the stairs, first door on your left. Don’t even think about snooping, or I _will_ smite you.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, angel.” 

Crowley found the stairs and took them two at a time to the flat above. He pushed open the door to the office and found Warlock curled up on the carpet, head resting on folded arms and fast asleep. The television was still on, and a controller lay abandoned next to him. 

“Hey, Hellspawn,” Crowley said softly as he gathered Warlock in his arms. “It’s just me. Time to go home.” 

Warlock made various sleepy noises and wound his thin arms around Crowley’s neck, burying his face in Crowley’s shoulder and sinking into sleep again. Crowley carefully navigated the stairs, and then poked his head into the backroom.

“We’re going to get going,” he said. “Thanks for the wine. I’ll call you, yeah? Figure out another, ah, playdate?”

“Yes, that would be fine,” Aziraphale said. He was still seated in his chair; Adam didn’t look like he was inclined to move anytime soon. “Mind how you go.”


	5. Chapter 5

Adam Fell was  _ definitely  _ the Antichrist. 

“Adam,” Aziraphale said sharply, fixing his son with a stern look. “Put that back.” 

Adam blinked at him. “Put what back?”

“Don’t even try me, young man. That chocolate you just slipped in your pocket.” 

“I don’t have any chocolate in my pocket!’ Adam exclaimed, wide-eyed and innocent. Fortunately, Aziraphale had not been fooled by those puppy-dog eyes in at least three years.

“Your left trousers pocket,” Aziraphale said, and he stared Adam down until the boy sighed and relented. 

“Not fair,” Adam muttered, sulking as he put the chocolate back on the shelf. “They have  _ loads _ , what would it even matter? No one will notice.” 

“It  _ matters  _ because it is wrong,” Aziraphale said. “You do not steal from others, Adam. That is a very bad thing to do.” 

“But I did loads of good things today, so it shouldn’t really matter that much,” Adam countered. “I cleaned my room, and I helped you shelve some books, and I even ate all my vegetables at lunch!” 

“Adam, the number of good things you do in a day don’t cancel out the bad ones,” Aziraphale said. 

“Why not?” 

Sighing, Aziraphale ripped his shopping list in half and handed one piece of it to Adam. “This is not the time for philosophical debates, my dear. Please go find these items for me. The faster we finish here, the sooner we can get home.” 

Six thousand years spent living as a human, and there were still things that Aziraphale had never got around to doing before Adam came into the picture. Making weekly trips to the shops, for one, because a growing human child went through an astonishing amount of food. Cooking, for another, because Adam wasn’t going to be capable of that for another several years and Aziraphale had to make sure he ate the proper amount of nutrients and calories each day. 

He had never needed to cook prior to Adam, preferring to take all of his meals out, but that wasn’t feasible with a baby or a toddler. Aziraphale found that he rather enjoyed the act of making a meal--not as much as he liked eating it, of course, but there was something strangely pleasant about watching someone enjoy food that you had cooked for them. And he liked their nightly ritual of Adam sitting at the table and telling him about his day while Aziraphale puttered around the kitchen. 

“Help me unpack the shopping, please, dearest,” Aziraphale said to Adam as they carried their bags into the bookshop. “Then you can go and play.” 

“Okay, Dad,” Adam said cheerfully enough, and the lingering irritation at him melted away. Aziraphale sighed. He truly  _ was  _ a good child, all things considered. 

Perhaps this mad plan of his would work out after all. 

“What did you think of Warlock?” Aziraphale asked later as they sat down to eat. 

“He’s weird,” Adam announced cheerfully--merely stating a fact, not deriding Warlock. “He’s not very good at video games, but he likes to read a lot, too. Can he come over again soon?”

“Yes, I think that can be arranged,” Aziraphale said, trying not to let disappointment creep into his voice. He’d been half-hoping that Adam would be adamantly against seeing the boy again, which wasn’t terribly angelic of him. Warlock seemed to be a nice child. It wasn’t his fault that he was being raised by a demon, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be punished for it.

“Cool,” Adam said. “Did you see his nails? They were neat. He said his dad painted them for him.” 

“Yes, I did notice that,” Aziraphale said. “Did you, er, want to paint your nails sometime, my dear?”

Adam considered this for a moment. 

“Nah,” he said finally. “Don’t think so. Thanks, though.” 

“You’re quite welcome, my boy.” 

****

Warlock Crowley was  _ definitely  _ the Antichrist. 

Crowley was indulging in his favorite sin that afternoon--sloth--when his mobile rudely woke him. He spent a few disorienting moments searching for it, finally locating it in the sofa cushions.

“What?” he grunted into the receiver. 

“Mr Crowley?” a woman said uncertainly. She sounded familiar, but Crowley couldn’t place her.

“Yeah, speaking.” 

“I’m calling about Warlock.”

Crowley blinked, abruptly awake. “What about him?” 

“There was an incident at school today that I wanted to make you aware of before he got home.” 

Ah, right. This was Warlock’s teacher. She had some flower name--Rose or Iris or Jasmine. Crowley couldn’t remember which it was, and he certainly couldn’t recall her surname. 

“What’d the little bugger do now?” he asked wearily, dropping dramatically back onto the couch and throwing an arm over his eyes. 

She explained to him what happened, Crowley made some vague noises about speaking to Warlock when he got home and telling her that it wouldn’t happen again, and then he rang off. 

Bugger. Trying to raise a child to resist his natural demonic nature was a right pain in the arse. Why the Hell had he signed up for this, again?

Because no one else gave a damn. The angels awaited the End Times as eagerly as the demons did. Not one of them gave a rat’s arse about this planet and its humans and their messy, cruel, beautiful lives. 

Well, no one except a rogue angel living in Soho, apparently. Which Crowley still couldn’t quite believe, to be honest. He didn’t think it was a trap--Heaven wasn’t big on subtlety--but he also couldn’t be sure that it  _ wasn’t _ , either. 

Warlock’s walk home from school usually took him about twenty minutes. Long enough for Crowley to pull out the laptop, binder, and pile of papers that made it look like he worked from home while Warlock was away at school. He was typing away madly--starting arguments with people on Twitter--when Warlock came through the door. 

Crowley and Warlock regarded one another silently for a moment. Then, Warlock said, “Hey, Dad.” 

“I hear you had an interesting day at school,” Crowley said, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, I hit Bobby,” Warlock said. “And I kicked Stevie in the leg.” 

Honestly, all Crowley wanted to do was congratulate him. He gnashed his teeth together for a moment, and then said, “And you know that’s--urk-- _ bad _ , right?”

“Sure. I know it means I can’t have dessert tonight and you’re going to take my laptop away.” Warlock toed out of his shoes, dropped his bag by the door, and threw himself on the couch. He shrugged. “It was totally worth it.” 

Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose. He wanted to laugh. Instead, he had to force himself to say, “And that’s not gonna happen again, right?” 

“Probably not,” Warlock said. 

“Warlock.” 

“Yeah, fine, I won’t do it again,” Warlock sighed. “Can I go to my room now?” 

“ _ Yes _ , go to your room,” Crowley said. “And don’t come out until, uh, tomorrow morning. I’ll bring you dinner later.”

“Cool, thanks!” Warlock retrieved his bag and went off. 

Crowley frowned after him, fairly certain that human children  _ weren’t  _ supposed to be that excited about their punishments. 

****

Crowley waited a week before getting in touch with Aziraphale again. In truth, he’d been hoping that the angel would reach out, and had vowed to wait until then. He wouldn’t be the first to reach out, not this time. 

Of course, that was a lie. Crowley’s sense of self-preservation wasn’t particularly well-honed, and his self-restraint was even worse. He managed seven days before calling Aziraphale. At least he had Warlock and the guise of a playdate to hide behind. He’d have preferred to text, but of course the angel didn’t have a mobile. Crowley dialed the shop, cursing under his breath and reminding himself that he was lucky the angel had a landline at all. If the need to blend in with humanity hadn’t already forced Aziraphale into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Crowley imagined he would have needed to send this message via the post.

“A. Z. Fell and Company.” This time, it was Aziraphale who answered the phone, his voice cool and measured. 

“Hey, angel. The hellspawn’s been asking after Adam. Mind if I bring him around sometime?” 

The silence that followed was ominous. The hairs on the back of Crowley’s neck stood on end. How the Hell did an  _ angel  _ manage to make three seconds of quiet seem so foreboding? 

“I suppose,” Aziraphale reluctantly allowed. “When would you like to drop him off?” 

“Oh, I’ll be staying,” Crowley said lightly. No way in Hell was he about to let Warlock spend any unsupervised time with an angel. “I’ll bring over the wine this time. Do you prefer red or white?” 

Crowley could have sworn he heard Aziraphale gnashing his teeth together.

“Red,” he spat finally, like the word was painful. “Sunday?” 

“Sure. We’ll see you at six.” 

Aziraphale hung up without even a goodbye, which wasn’t terribly angelic of him. Crowley wondered if he could put “annoying an angel” into his once-a-decade reports for Hell without having to actually identify said angel. It wouldn’t get him a commendation, but it would probably keep him out of the torture pits during his next performance review. 

Warlock usually spent his weekend mornings watching demon-approved cartoons. Crowley had been delighted to discover that most cartoons fell under this heading, as they generally seemed to be about cartoon animals outsmarting, tricking, and trying to murder their enemies. He thought those were good--er, well,  _ important  _ lessons to impart on the Antichrist. 

He dragged himself out of bed at ten on Sunday and shuffled into the main room. Warlock was still in his pajamas and glued to the television, an empty bowl that once had been full of cereal sitting next to him. Crowley sat next to him on the couch, and Warlock burrowed into his side. 

“Morning, hellspawn.” Crowley kissed his mop of unkempt dark hair. “I’m going to the nursery in a bit. Want to come help me pick out some new plants?”

“Sure, Dad.” Warlock still hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen. “After this is over.”

“Of course.” 

Something vibrated under Crowley. He shoved a hand between the cushion and the back of the sofa, and pulled out his mobile. So  _ that  _ was where it had disappeared to last night. 

Aziraphale was calling him. Crowley groaned inwardly. Probably he’d lost his nerve and was going to cancel tonight. 

“Anthony Crowley,” he answered anyway, just to be a bit of a bastard. 

“I wanted to see if I could take Warlock to church with us,” Aziraphale said without preamble.

“ _ What _ ?” Crowley said incredulously. Warlock looked up at him, and Crowley shook his head. He withdrew the arm he’d wrapped around the boy and stood, pacing over to the window. “Absolutely not.” 

“Why not?” Aziraphale pressed. “You want him to be influenced by me, don’t you? Taking him to church will help counter whatever wiles you’ve filled his head with.” 

“He’s the bloody Antichrist,” Crowley hissed. “You really think he can just walk into a church?” 

“First of all,  _ Adam  _ is the Antichrist. Second of all, on the  _ minuscule  _ chance that Warlock is the Antichrist, he’s also completely human. The whole point of the Antichrist is that he is human, that he’s raised as a human. He will be perfectly safe on consecrated ground.” 

Crowley’s feet tingled at the mere mention of it. He’d made the mistake of walking on consecrated ground exactly once in his life, and he had regretted it for years afterward. The idiotic agent of Heaven he’d been trying to save from a frankly embarrassing discorporation at the hands of some nitwit Nazis had refused his help, and been caught in the subsequent bombing back in ‘41. Crowley had never seen him on Earth again. Truth be told, Heaven’s agents never seemed to last for long. The longest-serving one had only been down here for a handful of centuries before accidentally being discorporated by a nasty bout of food poisoning. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale snapped. “You were so insistent that we work together, the least you could do is take it seriously. Do you want my help or not? Let me take the boys to church, and then after you can talk to them about demonic things, or whatever it is you do to recruit souls for Hell.” 

“ _ Fine _ ,” Crowley snapped.

“Excellent. Be at the shop in forty minutes, or we’ll be late.” 

Warlock vehemently protested as Crowley herded him first into the shower, and then into a pair of nice slacks and a button-down shirt. 

“Dad, we  _ never  _ go to church,” he moaned once they were in the Bentley and on the way to the bookshop. “I thought we were gonna get some plants!” 

“We’ll do that next weekend,” Crowley said sourly. “Mr Fell is a very important client and he’d like you to go to church with him and Adam today.”

He kept his eyes fixed on the road, but he could feel Warlock glowering at him. 

“That’s bullshit, Dad.” 

“Language,” Crowley admonished automatically. 

“You’re a really bad liar.”

“I’m an  _ excellent  _ liar.” 

“Can I get a cat?”

“What, I make you go to church  _ once  _ and I have to bribe you with a cat?” 

“Seems fair to me,” Warlock grumbled. 

“No.” 

Warlock huffed and went back to staring moodily out the window. 

Aziraphale was waiting for them outside the shop, Adam standing patiently next to him. As soon as Crowley pulled up and rolled down the window, he said, “Ah,  _ there  _ you are. Come along, Warlock, we don’t want to be late.” 

“Are you driving them?” Crowley asked, suddenly uneasy at the idea of Warlock riding in a car where someone else was driving. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, we’re going to walk,” Aziraphale said. “It’s a beautiful day, and the church isn’t far.” 

Crowley groaned inwardly. He couldn’t believe he was about to say this.

“Get in, angel,” he said, opening the door and stepping out. He folded his seat forward. “Come on. You’re cutting it close already, no need to be late if you don’t have to be.” 

Hysterical laughter bubbled in his chest. He fought to keep it down. A demon giving an angel a ride in his car? A demon giving an angel a ride to  _ church  _ in his car? This was beyond absurd. This was--

Well, if Crowley didn’t know any better, he would say that  _ Someone  _ was playing a cosmic prank on him right now.

Aziraphale’s face cycled through several different emotions before it finally settled on resignation. He put a hand on Adam’s back and urged him forward. “Come on, dear.”

Adam didn’t need telling twice. 

“This car is  _ wicked _ , Mr Crowley!” he exclaimed as he scrambled into the back seat. Aziraphale followed, carefully folding himself into the seat. 

Crowley returned his seat to its original position and got in, ignoring the glare Warlock was shooting him.

“She’s a 1929. I’ve had her since she rolled off the line,” he said--and then, remembering with a nasty jolt that Warlock was in the car with them, he hastily added, “Figure of speech. My grandfather owned her first, and then my father, and now she’s mine. Practically the same thing.” 

Aziraphale lifted an eyebrow at him in the rear view mirror, and Crowley ground his teeth together. 

_ You’re going to have to tell him eventually. _

If he could get away with it, he’d never tell Warlock a thing. He’d thought about it, on multiple occasions. What it would be like if the Apocalypse never came to pass, if Warlock never found out what he truly was. Crowley had decided that he would alter his corporation so that it would appear to age naturally, adding wrinkles and grey hair as the years went by, progressively slowing down and becoming stoop-shouldered. He would age as Warlock grew up, and then--somehow--he would die. Not for real, but it had to be believable. He hadn’t figured out yet how he would pull that off, but at some point he needed to exit Warlock’s life. Right now, his identification said that he was a forty-eight-year-old human. He figured he could probably get away with another forty or fifty years before his not-dying would arouse suspicion. Warlock would long be on his own by then, perhaps with a family of his own. Crowley could stage his own death, and then watch over Warlock for the rest of his life. 

He’d thought about that, too, more than he liked. What would he do, when Warlock finally died? If his soul went to Hell, Crowley could visit him on a regular basis. But if Warlock didn’t follow through with the Apocalypse, then it was more than likely that his soul would end up in Heaven, where Crowley would never be able to see him again. 

“Watch the road!” Aziraphale yelped from the back seat, and Crowley swerved.

“ _ Fuck _ , angel, don’t do that!” Crowley snapped. Sure, he’d looked away from the road for a moment, lost in his own thoughts, but the Bentley knew what she was doing. She wouldn’t let Warlock or any pedestrians come to harm. 

“Take a right up here,” Aziraphale said, his words clipped. 

Crowley took the turn at a sharper angle than he normally would have, if only for the satisfaction of Aziraphale being tossed against the door. He could feel the air crackle with the angel’s irritation. 

_ Don’t let him smite you in front of Warlock _ , a voice in the back of his mind warned him, and Crowley spent the rest of the drive on his best behavior. He even got out of the car when they arrived at the church, pushed his seat forward, and held out a hand to Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale eyed his hand dubiously for a beat, then two. Finally, he grasped Crowley’s hand and levered himself out of the car. 

“We’ll be done in an hour,” he said, and without so much as a goodbye, led the boys into the church. 

Crowley killed time by getting up to his usual brand of mischief. He strolled the streets near the church, gluing coins to the sidewalk with a snap of his fingers or waving a hand and causing the WiFi at a nearby cafe to run at half its normal speed. He strolled past harried people carrying their shopping in multiple bags and caused the bottoms to fall out, spilling groceries all over the street. He found a few members of his rat army lazing about in a garden, and had them cause some mischief in a nearby office building.

All in all, it was a successful morning of trouble-making, if he did say so himself.

He was perhaps a bit too pleased with his work, for when he met Aziraphale and the boys outside the church an hour later, Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at him and asked, “What did you do?”

“Why, Mr Fell,” Crowley said, pressing a hand to his chest, “I’m  _ shocked  _ you would think that I had been up to anything untoward.” 

“ _ Untoward _ ,” Aziraphale muttered under his breath as he got in the car. 

It was a quick drive back to the bookshop. Aziraphale fixed lunch for the boys, who immediately disappeared upstairs. Crowley produced a bottle of wine with a snap of his fingers, as he’d promised. 

“This was a good year,” Aziraphale murmured after a moment’s contemplation, which Crowley figured was the closest he was going to get to approval. 

They talked--well, about nothing, really, but the fact was that they  _ talked _ . Conversation flowed easily between them, as easily as the wine. Adam and Warlock played upstairs together, just like last time. They heard the occasional thumps and laughter from the flat above their heads, but nothing catastrophic happened. At the end of the night, Warlock even seemed reluctant to leave, which Crowley took as a good sign. The kid needed more friends, honestly, Antichrist or no. 

Warlock was characteristically quiet on the way home, but declined Crowley’s offer of ice cream for dessert, which was worrying. He disappeared into his room. Crowley let him be for an hour before he cautiously knocked on the door. 

“Hellspawn? Can I come in?” 

“Yeah,” Warlock called sullenly.

Crowley came into the room. Warlock was stretched out on his bed, nose buried in a magazine. Crowley went over and perched on the mattress. 

“What’d you think?” he asked, settling a hand on Warlock’s knee. “Of church today." 

Warlock shrugged. “It was alright.”

Crowley had only had the boy in his life for seven years, but he was adept now at reading his tone of voice. Or he liked to think he was, at least. 

“You hated it, didn’t you?”

He expected Warlock to snort, or maybe even laugh. He didn’t expect the tremor in Warlock’s lower lip, and he certainly didn’t expect Warlock’s eyes to grow shiny.

“Hey.” He squeezed Warlock’s knee. “What’s wrong? What happened?” 

“It’s stupid,” Warlock mumbled.

“Nothing you feel is stupid.” 

“He talked about Abraham.” Warlock swallowed. “And Isaac.”

_ Ah, shit.  _

“Warlock--” 

“It’s stupid!” Warlock burst out. “He was going to kill his son! All because God told him to! And everyone thought this was such a great story, but it  _ isn’t _ . If my dad did that to me, I’d--I’d never forgive him!” 

Crowley opened and closed his mouth several times. He didn’t know what to say to that. 

“I would never do that to you,” he said finally, even as his mind screamed at him.  _ No, stop, don’t make promises you might not be able to keep! _ “Hey. You know that, right?” 

“Yeah,” Warlock sniffed. “It was still a stupid story, though. Dunno why everyone liked it so much.” 

“Sometimes humans--sometimes people find comfort in strange things,” Crowley said helplessly. 

“Yeah, well, it’s a dumb story.” 

Crowley had no proper response for that, because it  _ was  _ an awful story. It had been worse to witness it in person; he would know. 

“Well, that’s the last time I’m making you go to church with Mr Fell. Thank you for trying it, but you don’t have to do it again.” Crowley tweaked Warlock’s nose and ruffled his hair. “I know it’s a school night, but I’ll let you stay up for an extra hour. How about that?” 

Warlock’s eyes lit up.

“Thanks, Dad!” He threw his arms around Crowley’s neck. “You’re the best.” 

Crowley could only hope that Warlock would still think the same of him in four years, and feared that wouldn’t be the case. 


	6. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of fluff before The Plot (TM) kicks in next chapter. :)

**_August 2007_ **

**_Mayfair_ **

Crowley paces the length of the atrium--it’s one hundred and two strides from one end of the cavernous room to the other, a much larger space than a building like this should be able to contain--bouncing the bundle in his arms with almost a feverish desperation. 

“Come on, come _on_ ,” he whispers, hearing a frantic note creep into his voice. He’s practically begging now, and he doesn’t care. “ _Please_ stop crying. I’ll-I’ll do anything. I’ll go out tomorrow and damn twenty souls to Hell for you. Fifty! Would that appease you?” 

The baby doesn’t seem to understand--or care--what he’s saying. Crowley already soundproofed the flat so none of his neighbors hear the racket--not for their peace of mind, of course, but so that he doesn’t have any humans come knocking on his door in the middle of the night. The last thing he needs is to draw more attention to himself than is strictly necessary. 

After all, he’s just kidnapped the Antichrist. 

The baby has been in his possession for sixty hours now, and Crowley hasn’t slept for any of it. The baby has slept only in fits and starts. When he does sleep, it’s only for a couple of hours at a time, and Crowley spends the entire time staring at the crib. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. For the Antichrist to vanish under his nose? For the crib to burst into flames? For Hastur and Ligur to appear in his flat, snatch the child, and condemn him to the deepest pit in Hell?

Well, yes. He expects all of that and worse. He’s just done the stupidest thing imaginable, and knowing his luck, he won’t get away with it. Not forever.

But he might get away with it for long enough. Long enough to stave off Armageddon and save the world. If he could do that much, it would be worth it. 

Which means he has eleven years. Eleven years to shape the Antichrist, to make him fall in love with the world so thoroughly, he won’t want to destroy it. Eleven years to raise the child with an equal amount of good and bad influences, so that he will come out normal. 

Well, as normal as one could be after being raised by a demon. 

Oh, _hell_. Crowley sits down heavily on the floor as the full enormity of what he’s got himself into sinks in. He’s going to be _raising_ the Antichrist. Him, a demon! Raising a baby! He’s been feeding it already with some formula he miracled into the flat, and he’s whisked away the messes in the infant’s diaper with a snap, and he miracled a crib out of nothing...but it’s only been two days, and he has to get through eleven _years_ of this. Eleven years of messes and tears and a child running amok in his immaculate flat, and he’ll have to go to _school_ like a normal human child, and Crowley will have to feed him three times a day and play with him and make sure he’s _happy_ \--

He can’t do this. He wasn’t cut out for this. What had he been _thinking_ ? Well, clearly he hadn’t been, not at all. And there’s nothing he can do now to remedy the situation. He’s already told Hell that the Antichrist is with that insufferable American family. He can’t go back to them and say _whoops actually I’ve had the real Antichrist in the Bentley this whole time, completely forgot he was back there._ He can’t drop the child off at an orphanage, because he’ll still grow up and destroy the world and Hell will realize Crowley’s terrible mix-up. There’s no scenario where he can get out of raising the ANtichrist and emerge with his skin--and the world--intact.

No, there’s nothing for it but to stick to his original, outrageous plan: raise the Antichrist to be neutral, neither good nor evil, and he’ll choose not to destroy the world. The Earth gets a reprieve, and so does Crowley. 

It’s not much of a chance, but it’s all he’s got.

The Antichrist continues to wail. He squirms in Crowley’s grip, trying to twist out of his blankets, his tiny red face screwed up in misery. 

“You need a name,” Crowley mutters as he gently bounces the bundle. “Can’t just call you _Antichrist_ for the rest of your life, people might find that a bit weird. How about William?” 

The baby continues to cry, and Crowley has to concede the point. It’s a nice name, but naming the baby after a former lover is probably too weird. 

“Arthur?” he tries. Good strong name, that. But the baby continues to cry. “Elijah? Joseph? Methuselah?” 

The infant is having none of it. Crowley gets to his feet again and resumes his pacing. 

“I suppose Lucifer is out,” he mutters darkly. “Luke? Lucas? Nah, that’s too on the nose for me. How about Great Dark One? Damien? Hellion? Warlock?” 

All at once, the baby stops crying. He stares up at Crowley, wide-eyed.

“You’re kidding,” Crowley says. “Seriously? Warlock?” 

The baby coos at him, and Crowley’s heart does something vaguely uncomfortable in his chest.

“Warlock,” he repeats, and _that_ gets him a giggle. Aren’t infants too young to be giggling at three days old? Then again, this _is_ the Son of Satan. Even at this young age, he’s probably stronger and smarter than Crowley. He just can’t communicate that very well, given his tiny corporation. “Alright, then. I guess your name is Warlock. Bit weird, but hey, at least no one will ever share your name.” 

_Warlock Crowley_. It doesn’t roll off the tongue quite in the same way that Anthony J. Crowley does, but it’s not terrible. Besides, this is the name that the Dark Prince wants, and Crowley’s not about to deny him anything. He may have shit preservation instincts, but even he knows that upsetting the child of Lucifer is a Bad Idea. 

****

**_August 2007_ **

**_Soho_ **

Sergeant Shadwell is one of the stupidest humans Aziraphale has ever had the misfortune of knowing.

Unfortunately, he’s also-- _somehow_ \--proved highly invaluable over the years, which means that Aziraphale can’t quite get rid of him. He’s the one, after all, who tipped Aziraphale off about the suspicious group of nuns running the hospital in Tadfield. Aziraphale did the surveillance himself--he would never trust Shadwell for such a task--and several cold weeks camped out in the forest, watching the hospital, finally paid off.

He has the Antichrist.

Aziraphale has always known that it would come to this. Even back in Eden, watching humanity take its first halting steps on the newly-formed Earth, he knew it would all end in destruction. It’s part of the plan, after all. It’s only in the past few centuries that Aziraphale has realized that he doesn’t _want_ the Earth to end. 

And now, he can do something about it.

He’s spent weeks preparing for this. He’s scoured every parenting site he can find on the Internet, read every book he can get his hands on. He’s purchased a crib, changing table, diaper bag, bottles and formula, clothes and toys, even a baby bjorn. 

He’s going to raise the Antichrist in a good, loving home, and persuade the boy _not_ to destroy the world once Armageddon gets underway. The problem is, Aziraphale has no idea how long he has until that day. He’s been cut off from Heaven for millennia, and he doesn’t know what the plans for Doomsday are. Only that it _will_ come. There is no avoiding that. 

“I suppose you could use a name.” Aziraphale studies the baby in his crib. He’s unusually calm for an infant. Though he’s awake, he doesn’t cry, merely stares up at Aziraphale with wondering blue eyes. 

This is the one thing Aziraphale hasn’t been able to decide on. He’s scoured baby name books, and nothing feels quite _right_. He doesn’t want the Antichrist to have a name that could be construed as evil in any way, which is too bad, because under normal circumstances Aziraphale quite likes the names _Damien_ and _Lucas._

He keeps coming back to one name, considering it and dismissing it multiple times because it feels _too_ on-the-nose. Then again, this _is_ the end of the world. Perhaps subtlety isn’t what this situation calls for. 

“Adam,” Aziraphale says, testing the name out on his tongue. The first human, the one who gave birth to an entire species. Perhaps it’s only fitting that humanity’s end shares the same name as its progenitor. The baby gurgles at him. “Do you like that name, then? Adam. Hm, I suppose it does suit you.” 

He leans over the side of the crib to run the back of a finger down Adam’s chubby cheek. Adam coos and kicks his legs, and something odd flutters behind Aziraphale’s breastbone. He stays until Adam finally falls asleep, and then pads quietly out of the room.

****

**_July 2009_ **

**_Mayfair_ **

“Warlock, no!” Crowley snaps his fingers, and Warlock rises several inches into the air, high above the pot of boiling water he’d been about to knock over. He giggles as Crowley snatches him out of the air and holds him tightly to his chest. “How did you even _get_ up there, you hellion?” 

Warlock makes a grab for Crowley’s glasses. He tosses them on the floor with a shriek. Crowley sighs.

“Bloody good thing humans don’t form memories this young,” he mutters. He knows he has to cut down on the miracles. He’s scaled back significantly in the past two years, mostly because he didn’t want to answer any questions from Hell should anyone Down There bother to audit his miracles. But he also needs to get used to not using them around Warlock. Soon, the boy is going to start to notice, and remember. Crowley can’t risk being found out. 

“Da!” Warlock cries. “Food!”

“Yes, I know you’re hungry, but that does _not_ mean that you can climb on the counter tops and put your hand in the boiling water!” Never mind that any injury Warlock sustains Crowley can fix with a snap of his fingers--well, _probably_. He’s actually not sure what would happen if Warlock hurts himself. He’s sustained plenty of bumps and bruises in his nearly two years on this planet, even under Crowley’s watchful eye, but so far nothing has happened. Crowley’s not sure what he’s expecting. Hell obviously doesn’t have a way to track the Antichrist--otherwise, his fake reports about the Dowling kid would have been found out long ago. But if something big happens, something drastic? Does Lucifer get alerted immediately if the Antichrist breaks a bone or gets concussed? Crowley’s not eager to find out. 

He finishes the pasta without further incident. Warlock wolfs down his lunch and then immediately wants to play. He drags Crowley over to his train set in the living room and Crowley finds himself drawn into an elaborate story about trains, mermaids, a buffalo, and some cats. 

For the Antichrist, Warlock isn’t terribly demonic. Of course, he’s not quite two years old yet, and he has to appear like a human child until his eleventh birthday. Otherwise, his human parents would have noticed that something was wrong with their child. Nonetheless, Crowley expected to notice _something._ He’s not human, and neither is the Antichrist. He expected to notice some of his demonic energy leaking through, random burst of power when Warlock was particularly happy or upset, but so far there has been nothing. Not that Crowley’s complaining, of course. But he can’t help but feel like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Warlock is sprawled out on the floor, head resting against Crowley’s thigh. He’s been running one of his trains up and down Crowley’s leg, but now he lets loose a jaw-cracking yawn. The train falls from his hand and he scrubs a fist against his eye.

“C’mon, little beast.” Crowley lifts Warlock into his arms. “Time for a nap.”

“No.” Warlock wraps his arms around Crowley’s neck and yawns again. “No nap.”

“Not even if I tell you a story?” Crowley gets to his feet and shifts Warlock in his arms, so his head is resting against Crowley’s chest. He’s reminded, suddenly and brutally, of the baby he used to cradle in the middle of the night not even two years ago. The time has gone too quickly.

“What story?” Warlock asks as Crowley carries him down the hall to his room.

“How about the one where you grow up to be the most powerful person in the world and crush all your enemies beneath your feet?” He spends the vast majority of his time reading Warlock wholesome picture books that instill values such as sharing with others and being kind to animals. Sometimes he needs to get the taste of pure _Goodness_ out of his mouth with a less savory story, and Warlock seems to enjoy them. 

Warlock hums and snuggles closer, and Crowley pretends it doesn’t make him melt inside. “M’kay.” 

****

**_November 2011_ **

**_London_ **

The restaurant is busy this time of day. Aziraphale prefers to lunch later in the afternoon, but his habits have changed in recent years, now that Adam is in the picture. They had gone to a children’s museum this morning, which had held Adam’s attention for a whole two hours, a new record. He started getting cranky around eleven, though, and Aziraphale knows of only one surefire way to fix that, short of a nap. 

So that was how they ended up at one of his favorite restaurants, one he hasn’t visited in months. He rarely leaves Adam with a babysitter, after all, as he doesn’t want to subject the Antichrist to too many humans. Adam’s powers haven’t manifested yet, but Aziraphale is sure it’s only a matter of time.

“Oh, Mr Fell! I didn’t know you had a son!” Renee exclaims. She’s one of Aziraphale’s favorite waitresses here, always on hand to serve him whenever he pops by. He doesn’t _explicitly_ use a miracle to ensure that she’s always available. He merely... _suggests_ that reality should cooperate with him. “He’s absolutely _darling_. How old is he?”

“Four,” Aziraphale says. He leans over to straighten Adam’s tiny bowtie, which somehow has been knocked askew sometime during their walk from the cab to this table. “His name is Adam.” 

“S’nice to meet you!” Adam pipes up, and Aziraphale beams. Adam has impeccable manners so far, and he couldn’t be prouder. It means he’s rubbing off on the Antichrist. 

“A pleasure to meet you, too, young Mr Fell.” Renee gives them both a brilliant smile. “What can I get for you gentlemen?” 

Aziraphale orders for them both. He wants to make sure that Adam is brought up with a taste for the finer things that life has to offer. He can’t wait until Adam is older, and he can truly start expanding his palate. For now, he plays it safe with food that isn’t _too_ much of a stretch for Adam’s limited tastes, but is still a step above pasta and fish sticks. 

Adam eats his meal without fuss, and seems to enjoy it. He’s a bundle of energy, though, and so Aziraphale quickly finishes his own meal so that they can leave. Under normal circumstances, he would linger for an hour or three, but--well, nothing about this is normal, is it?

He pays the check, and then they’re out in the brilliant sunshine. It’s a crisp day, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Aziraphale can’t say for certain, because he hasn’t yet seen Adam show his powers outright, but he can’t help but wonder if this isn’t Adam’s doing. The boy loves sunny days, after all. 

Adam takes his hand as soon as they’re out on the pavement, and Aziraphale goes all fuzzy inside. The Antichrist is _such_ a loving child. Aziraphale likes to think it’s his influence. He hasn’t been a proper angel in a _very_ long time, but how else could he account for Adam being so gentle, so kind, so full of joy and love? Somehow, Aziraphale’s angelic influence must be affecting the child. It has to be. 

The world can’t afford for it not to.

“Dad.” Adam tugs on his hand as they cross a street together, his attention drawn by children on a nearby playground. “Can I go play?”

Aziraphale thought he was more of a _Papa_ , personally, but Adam has always called him _Dad_. It’s not his place to try to dissuade the boy from calling him what he wished. He peers at the playground, scanning the faces of the children and the parents. 

“Are those your classmates?” he asks. “Do you know them?”

Not that it would make much of a difference, he thinks sadly. He’s not comfortable yet letting Adam spend too much time in the company of normal humans. What if something were to happen? What if he had an unexpected burst of his powers, which would lead to Heaven discovering him? Discovering Aziraphale? Playing on a playground might lead to regular play dates, which might lead to Adam and Aziraphale growing too close to humans, which might lead to suspicions about whether or not _they_ were human. Aziraphale has lived among humans for six centuries now without detection, because he keeps his distance from them and never lets them too close. Not for long, anyway. 

“No,” Adam says. “But it looks fun.”

“We’ll come back another time,” Aziraphale says. “When it isn’t so...crowded.” 

Adam grows quiet at that, but doesn’t argue. “Okay, Dad.” 

Aziraphale squeezes his hand. “Let’s go get some ice cream. Hm? What do you say to that? And then we’ll spend a lovely afternoon reading together.” 

That seems to mollify Adam, at least for the moment. He smiles up at Aziraphale, the afternoon sun lighting his burnished-gold curls and making them glow. _My beautiful boy,_ Aziraphale thinks, quite unbidden. This was only supposed to be a job, yes, but he’s grown rather attached to Adam these past four years. More attached than he thought possible. More attached than is wise, probably. It will only end in heartbreak. Even if Adam averts the Apocalypse, he is still the Antichrist. Aziraphale can’t keep him forever. 

They continue on down the pavement, Adam swinging their joined hands, looking like the happiest boy on the planet.

Aziraphale will do his level best to keep it that way.


	7. Chapter 7

Crowley tried not to think too much about how easily Adam and the angel slithered into his life, slipping into all the cracks and the empty spaces as though they had always been there. He and Aziraphale settled into a near-weekly routine of dinner and drinks in the back room of the bookshop while the boys played upstairs. They compared notes each time, reviewing Warlock’s and Adam’s behavior over the course of the previous week, looking for signs that one of them definitively was the Antichrist--and that their efforts to influence him were paying off. 

Unfortunately, nearly a year into their Arrangement (which had a capital _A_ in Crowley’s mind, but the angel didn’t need to know that, thank you very much), they were still no closer to their goal. Both of the children were good, but not exceptionally so. They each could be holy terrors when they wanted to be. And no matter what life threw at them, neither of them had demonstrated anything remotely close to demonic power. There were little things here and there that couldn’t be readily explained, small incidents that had the whiff of a tiny miracle about them, but that hardly proved anything conclusive. 

“At this rate, the Apocalypse will be upon us and we _still_ won’t know which of them is the Antichrist,” Aziraphale said irritably one evening. Crowley opened a second bottle of wine and poured them both glasses. 

“S’pose that could be true,” Crowley allowed, though he really, _really_ hoped that it wasn’t. “Maybe we both got it wrong and _neither_ of them is the Antichrist.” 

Aziraphale went ashen. “No. No, no, I don’t even want to _contemplate_ that possibility. We can’t have both got it wrong. No, it’s still most likely Adam, I’m certain of it. I do _not_ make mistakes like that.”

“Sure, angel.” Crowley sprawled back in his chair. “Be a whole hell of a lot easier if we could just get one of them to demonstrate his powers. Think it’ll work if we scare it out of him? Like, I dunno, take ‘em both to a haunted house or something. See which of them sets something on fire or whatever.”

“Absolutely not,” Aziraphale said firmly. He took a long swallow of wine then, looking contemplative. Crowley wasn’t sure he liked that look. “What if...what if we just _told_ them? Sat them down, explained the situation, and asked them nicely not to end the world.” 

“And what if that backfires on us?” Crowley countered. “What if it, I dunno, _activates_ him somehow? I mean _really_ activates him. What if it makes him come into his full power early? And--and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s not ready for it, and the Antichrist part of him just takes over and _poof_!”

He mimed an explosion with his hands. Aziraphale made a face.

“Or he realizes that his father has been lying to him for seven years and destroys the world in a fit of pique?” Aziraphale put in quietly. 

Now it was Crowley’s turn to grimace. He didn’t like to think about how the very foundation of Warlock’s life with him was built on lies. He thought that Crowley was human, a human who had chosen Warlock as a baby because he _wanted_ him. Sooner or later, Crowley was going to have to shatter that illusion. 

“We can’t tell them the truth,” he said firmly. “Not yet. And with any luck, we’ll _never_ have to. All we have to do is make sure whoever the Antichrist is, whether it’s Adam or Warlock, he sends the Hellhound away on his eleventh birthday. Then this whole thing can be avoided.”

****

Warlock woke up before Dad on Sunday morning, but then, Warlock was _always_ up before him. It was pretty brilliant, actually, especially at the weekend. Warlock could have whatever he wanted for breakfast, and then he could watch television or play games and Dad couldn’t say anything because he was still asleep and didn’t even know about it. Not that Dad ever seemed to care. Dad was _cool_. 

Dad slept longer than usual today. He finally shuffled out of his room at eleven, ruffling Warlock’s hair as he passed behind the couch. 

“Morning, Dad,” Warlock said without taking his eyes off the TV. Dad grunted in response.

He was marginally more coherent after a cup of coffee and a shower, by which time Warlock had migrated from one end of the couch to the other. 

“How long have you been staring at that thing, anyway?” Dad asked.

“Dunno. Got up at eight.” 

“ _Ugh_. Eight. Are you sure you’re my kid?” 

“You’re the one who picked me.” 

“Yeah,” Dad said, giving Warlock that soppy smile he sometimes did. “Yeah, I did. D’you wanna go to the park today?”

“Yeah! Can I feed the ducks?” 

“‘Course. Go get dressed. I’ll fix us some lunch, and we can go after that.” 

Warlock hurried off to get dressed. He heard his dad puttering around in the kitchen, preparing a quick meal for them. 

“Dad, have you seen my shoes?” he called, after a fruitless search of his bedroom turned up nothing. 

“Yeah, they’re by the-- _oh, bless it_!” 

There was a crash in the kitchen, followed by the sound of glass shattering. 

“Dad?” Warlock poked his head out of his room. Dad didn’t respond. “You okay?” 

He padded down the hall to the kitchen. A plate lay in pieces on the floor, the contents of a sandwich scattered around it. A glass lay sideways on the counter, water dripping onto the floor. Dad was nowhere in sight. 

“Dad?” Warlock called again. He went through the flat, checking all of the rooms, a cold stone growing in the pit of his stomach. “Dad? Where did you go? This isn’t funny!”

Nothing. Warlock searched the whole flat three times, but Dad was just _gone_. He ran to his room and grabbed his mobile, the one Dad had given him for his birthday last year to use for emergencies only, and he dialed Dad’s number.

His heart sank when the tinny strains of _Under Pressure_ started playing faintly in the distance. He followed the noise to Dad’s room, and saw his mobile sitting there on his bedside table. Warlock pushed the end call button on his own mobile and stood there for a moment, fighting the sudden burning sensation behind his eyes. 

Where did Dad _go_?

****

Aziraphale was taking inventory when he felt it, that sharp tug behind his sternum that indicated he was about to be summoned. He opened his mouth to call out a warning to Adam, but it happened too quickly. 

“Drat,” he muttered as he materialized in an unfamiliar living room. He’d been holding a particularly fragile book at the time, too. He hoped it hadn’t been damaged irreparably by its inevitable fall to the floor. “Hello? Who’s there?” 

The room was dark. Aziraphale reached out cautiously first with his senses, and then with his hands. Odd. He wasn’t in a summoning circle. He took a careful step forward, and then another, and didn’t run into any barriers. 

He heard an odd snuffling sound. Was that...crying? He reached out with his senses again, this time drawing on a tiny bit of divine power that hopefully would go unnoticed, and picked out a human aura nearby. And then--Aziraphale physically recoiled, shoving his power back into that lockbox deep within himself and sealing it away. 

Something here was _distinctly_ demonic. 

Aziraphale crept carefully through the dark room. His eyes had adjusted, and he could make out the faint silhouettes of the furniture. The snuffling noise was growing louder, so he must be headed in the right direction. He soon found himself in a long hallway. Only one room at the end of the hall was lit, and Aziraphale steeled himself for what he might find there. He wished he had something, _anything_ on him that could serve as a weapon. If he had to, he would prefer to dispatch the demon by physical means rather than ethereal ones so as not to give himself away to Heaven, but there was a human in danger here and Aziraphale wasn’t about to abandon them. 

He paused in front of the door, steeled himself with a deep breath, and shoved it open.

Warlock was crouched on the floor. He gaped at Aziraphale for a moment, his face streaked with tears. Crowley lay face down next to him, one arm flung over his head. The rug was already soaked through with his blood. 

“Good Lord,” Aziraphale muttered, dropping to his knees beside Warlock. The boy flung himself at Aziraphale. He caught Warlock and held him close with one arm, and laid his other hand on Crowley’s back. The demon was breathing, but barely. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know!” Warlock wept. “He was gone for a really long time, and then he--he--is he dead?”

“No,” Aziraphale said. “He’s not dead. But he does need help.” 

He pulled away from Warlock to look him in the eye. “Warlock, how did you bring me here?” 

“I didn’t,” Warlock said. He sniffed and swiped ineffectually at his eyes. Tears continued to stream down his cheeks. 

“Warlock, you must have done _something_ ,” Aziraphale said gently. “I didn’t come here on my own.” 

“I didn’t--I don’t know! Dad just--just _appeared_ like this, and I didn’t know what to do, and I just--I just wished really hard that you were here because I don’t know who else can help him!” 

“Okay,” Aziraphale said. Best not to press further. “Warlock, do you know...what your dad _is_? What I am?” 

Warlock frowned at him. “He’s my dad. You’re Adam’s dad.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.” 

Warlock stared at him blankly. Aziraphale sighed. He knew Crowley hadn’t wanted to tell Warlock the truth, but he didn’t think Crowley had wanted him to find out like this, either. 

“We need to get him to the bookshop so I can treat him,” Aziraphale said, dropping the subject for now. “I’m going to need your help with that. Do you know where his mobile is?”

Warlock wiped his cheeks and pointed at the bedside table. Crowley’s mobile and sunglasses sat there. 

“Ah, excellent. I don’t suppose you know the password.” 

“Yeah,” Warlock said, looking slightly guilty. “I figured it out once. It’s my birthday.”

Aziraphale didn’t want to admit, not even to himself, how adorable that was. “Right. Can you use it to call, um, what’s that taxi service all the young ones like to use nowadays?”

“Uber?” 

“Yes, that’s the one. Do you know how to get one for us?” He would rather take Crowley straight from this building to a waiting car, rather than standing with his lifeless body on a street corner trying to hail a cab. It would draw slightly less attention.

“Yeah.” Warlock sniffed again and went to retrieve Crowley’s mobile. He unlocked it and started to poke at the screen. 

Aziraphale turned his attention back to Crowley. This was demonic work, there was no question about that. Warlock had said that Crowley _appeared_ like this. Had he been down in Hell? That seemed the most likely answer. He knew that Hell was awful, but it seemed to him to be counterproductive to torture, and perhaps even kill, one’s longest-serving agent on Earth.

“Mr Fell? The car will be here in three minutes.” 

“Thank you, dear boy. Would you mind going ahead and getting the doors for me?” Aziraphale rolled Crowley onto his back, got one of his arms around his shoulders, and hauled him upright. Even with his corporation’s supernatural strength, Crowley was a heavy burden. Warlock held the door of the flat open for him, then darted over to the lift and jabbed the button. Thankfully, no one was inside the lift, and Aziraphale made sure no one else got on at any of the other floors. It wasn’t a miracle so much as it was a...suggestion that reality cooperate with his wishes. 

The driver gave them an alarmed look when Warlock got in, followed by the unconscious Crowley and huffing Aziraphale. The angel sent a suggestion in the driver’s direction that there was nothing unusual about his passengers, and once he dropped them off, he wouldn’t think about them again.

“Soho,” Aziraphale said as the driver pulled away from the kerb. He gave the address for the bookshop, then arranged Crowley so the unconscious demon was leaning against him and not Warlock. 

They didn’t speak for the ride over to the bookshop. Warlock seemed to be in a daze, and Aziraphale didn’t want to say anything that he would need to wipe the driver’s memory for. The less he drew on his powers, the better. 

Once the driver deposited them at their destination, Warlock ran for the door while Aziraphale hoisted the still-unconscious demon into his arms. No one paid them much mind; this was Soho, after all, and the people who lived here had seen stranger sights than this. 

“Adam!” Aziraphale called. He kicked the door shut behind him, and it locked automatically. Warlock, without him even having to ask, flipped the sign to CLOSED. 

Adam came pounding down the stairs as Aziraphale moved into the backroom and laid Crowley out on the couch. Warlock followed like a ghost, his eyes wide and panicky, his face splotchy from tears. 

“What happened to Mr Crowley?” Adam gasped as he came tearing into the room.

“Mr Crowley is hurt, and I need to help him,” Aziraphale said. “Can you take Warlock upstairs, please? Get him some water and heat up some of the leftovers from last night. I don’t think he’s eaten all day. You can watch television, or play video games if you want. Just stay upstairs.”

“Is he gonna die?” Fresh tears leaked down Warlock’s cheeks. 

“No, Warlock,” Aziraphale said firmly. Not if he had anything to say about it. “He’s not going to die. But I need to work in peace. Please.”

“Okay, Dad.” Adam took Warlock’s hand and tugged him towards the door. 

As soon as the door shut behind the boys, Aziraphale turned his attention back to Crowley. He truly was a frightful mess, his clothes ripped to shreds, his body bloody and bruised and burned. The smell of brimstone was heavy in the air and on Aziraphale’s tongue. Oftentimes when they were together, Aziraphale caught a whiff of smoke from Crowley. He tried to cover it with his expensive soaps and shampoos and cologne, but couldn’t eliminate it completely. Aziraphale politely never said anything; he got the impression that the demon spent a fair bit of time trying to mask the faint whiff of Hell that followed him around. _This_ , though. Crowley _reeked_ of Hell. 

It wasn’t terribly taxing--and, more importantly, hardly detectable--for him to reach out with his powers just to brush up against Crowley’s true form, the one stuffed inside his human corporation, and get a sense of the extent of his injuries. Not fatal, thank--well, Whoever. That meant that Aziraphale wouldn’t have to expend any miracles to heal him. 

Could Crowley heal himself, once he was conscious? Aziraphale didn’t know much about demons, having never been much interested in them after their Fall. He was originally supposed to be Heaven’s agent here on Earth, which meant that he would have spent a good deal of time learning about and fighting demons if he’d stayed at his post, he imagined. Instead, he had fled, and thus was largely ignorant not only of what Heaven was up to nowadays, but what Hell and its denizens were like at all. 

Except for _this_ demon, who, Aziraphale would wager, had about as much in common with his side as Aziraphale did with the other angels. 

Aziraphale shook himself. This was no time to be getting distracted. He went upstairs to gather various first aid supplies, and then brought them all down to the back room. He carefully peeled Crowley out of the shredded leather jacket, then disposed of the shirt underneath as well. He cleaned the cuts and gashes across Crowley’s torso, bandaged them, and moved on. Rolling Crowley onto his stomach, he found a number of burns on Crowley’s back that he pressed salve into before wrapping them. The wrist and fingers of his left hand were swollen. Aziraphale reached out with his senses, and found that they were indeed broken. He could set the bones manually, but Crowley would have to heal them. 

He rolled Crowley over once more and probed his head carefully, feeling for anything that might be a more serious injury. He felt a few bumps under his fingers, but nothing ghastly. Nothing that should prevent Crowley from waking up. Aziraphale finished tending to Crowley’s wounds, and then packed away his supplies again. Throughout it all, the demon hadn’t so much as twitched.

There was nothing to do now but wait. Aziraphale chose a book at random from the top of one pile, smiling softly when he noticed which one it was. One of Oscar’s, of course. That always served to calm him, no matter the situation.

Aziraphale settled into his favorite armchair, and began to read.

****

Warlock was the first one awake the next morning. Aziraphale had kept watch over Crowley’s still form all night, so when Warlock poked his head cautiously into the study sometime after dawn, Aziraphale beckoned to him. Warlock hesitated, looking both weary and so terrified he might shake apart at any second.

“Warlock, come here,” Aziraphale said gently. He held out his arms, and this time Warlock went to him without hesitation. Aziraphale pulled him into his lap, and threaded his fingers through Warlock’s hair as he had seen Crowley do on numerous occasions. “Your father is going to be fine.” 

“Okay,” Warlock whispered. He rested his head against Aziraphale’s chest and let out a shaky sigh.

“I promise. He’s going to have to stay here for a few days while he heals. You’ll stay in Adam’s room, and I’ll take care of you until he wakes up.” Aziraphale drew a deep breath. “Now. Can you tell me what happened? Start from the beginning.” 

“We were gonna go to the park,” Warlock said. His voice wavered. “And then there was a crash in the kitchen, and Dad--and then Dad was _gone._ I looked everywhere and I called his mobile and I couldn’t _find_ him. I thought he--he _left_ me.” 

“My dear, your father would _never_.” There weren’t many things Aziraphale was sure about when it came to the demon, but that was one of them. “How long was he gone?” 

“He disappeared at lunch, and when he came back...that’s when you came.” 

Roughly six hours or so, then. Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had escaped, in which case he could have a horde of angry demons after him, or if he’d been sent back by Hell once they had finished with him. There was no way to be certain until Crowley woke up and could say so himself.

“Thank you, Warlock. That’s very helpful.” Aziraphale rubbed his back in gentle, soothing circles. “That must have been very frightening for you, not knowing where your dad was. You were _very_ brave.”

“M’not brave,” Warlock sniffled. 

“Warlock, of _course_ you are. You’re our brave boy.” _Our_? Where the Heaven did _that_ come from? Thankfully, Warlock didn’t seem to notice. Aziraphale ran a hand down his spine and swiftly changed the subject. “Are you hungry?” 

Warlock sniffed again, and then said, “A little.” 

“I’ll make you some breakfast. It’s--” Aziraphale checked his watch. “Goodness, it’s after nine already. How about you go wake Adam for me, and I’ll make some food for you both?”

****

Crowley lay on Aziraphale’s sofa, still as death, for almost two full days. On the afternoon of the second day, his eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright. His wings sprang into reality, knocking over a pile of books.

“Warlock,” he said--croaked, really. The poor dear’s throat sounded ripped to shreds. 

_Poor dear_? Aziraphale shook himself. He had no idea where _that_ had come from. 

“He’s safe,” he said, and Crowley twisted around to stare at him. “You both are. For now, anyway.” 

“What happened?” Crowley demanded.

“I was rather hoping you could tell me,” Aziraphale said. “It seems you had a rather serious encounter with Hell, and I found you just in time.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Crowley groaned. He vanished his wings and lay back on the sofa again. “Of course you did. Just my luck.” 

“What did Hell want with you?” Aziraphale asked. “I assume they haven’t discovered us and our plot, or we would likely be dead by now.” 

“No.” Crowley rubbed his face. “Surprise performance review.” 

“ _That_ was a performance review?”

“Mm. And a pretty good one, too. I got a couple of commendations.”

“But--they _tortured_ you!”

“Comes with the territory, angel.” Crowley closed his eyes. “Go back to your book. Wake me sometime before the month’s over.”

“Don’t you dare fall asleep on me, demon. We’re not finished talking!” 

Crowley groaned and threw an arm over his eyes. “Must we?”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Aziraphale snapped. “This is _serious_. Or aren’t you wondering how I was able to find you so quickly?”

Crowley waved a hand. “Please, enlighten me.”

“Warlock summoned me.” 

“Well, he’s a bright kid,” Crowley said. “Knows how to use a mobile and everything, unlike _some_ angels I know.”

“Warlock didn’t call me. He _summoned_ me. As in, one moment I was standing in my bookshop, and the next I was in your flat.” 

Crowley lifted his arm and stared at Aziraphale. 

“You’re serious,” he said. 

“Deadly so, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale said. “Warlock summoned me without the aid of a summoning circle or an incantation. He said--well, he said that he wished I was there. And then, I was.” 

Crowley tried to sit up. He appeared to think better of it and slumped back down again. He dragged his hands down his face. 

“So Warlock _is_ the Antichrist,” he said finally. 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said quietly. “Adam can do some extraordinary things, too. He changes the weather, for one. Rain will suddenly clear up whenever he wants it to, and we’ve had a white Christmas here in Soho every year since he came to live with me.” 

“Well, they can’t _both_ be the Antichrist, Aziraphale.”

“I _know_ that!” Aziraphale snapped. He pushed his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what to do.” 

“We’ll figure it out, angel,” Crowley said. A thought then seemed to occur to him, and his face fell. “Ah, bless it. Warlock saw you appear?”

“No. But he saw you pop back into existence from Hell,” Aziraphale said. “You need to tell him, Crowley.” 

****

Crowley made it upstairs to Aziraphale’s bedroom with the angel’s help, then promptly fell asleep on his bed. Well, _sleep_ was a generous term. Rather, he fell unconscious for what felt like only a few minutes, but when he opened his eyes again, hours had passed and night had fallen. 

There was something uncomfortably sharp digging into his side. It took him a few hazy moments to realize that it was Warlock’s elbow. At some point, the boy must have snuck into bed with him. Judging by his breathing, he wasn’t asleep, but he held himself perfectly still like he was pretending to be.

Crowley groaned softly. “Warlock.” 

Warlock held still for another moment, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. He sighed. “Hey, Dad.” 

The elbow vanished as Warlock shifted. Crowley rolled onto his back and held out his arm, swallowing a groan of pain at the movement. Warlock took the invitation immediately and snuggled up against him.

“I’m fairly certain you’re not supposed to be in here,” Crowley said. Warlock huffed. “Aren’t you supposed to be staying in Adam’s room?”

“Adam snores.” 

“Are you okay?” Crowley asked quietly. 

“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine.” One of Warlock’s hands curled into his t-shirt, holding on to Crowley like he used to do when he was a baby. It made the ache in Crowley’s chest intensify. 

“Did I scare you?” 

Warlock was a long time in answering. Reluctantly, he said, “Yes.” 

“I’m sorry, baby.” Crowley kissed his dark hair, then gave him a gentle squeeze and said, “Sit up. I want to talk to you.” 

Warlock drew away from him and sat up. Biting the inside of his cheek, Crowley slowly levered himself into a sitting position, using the bed’s pillows and headboard for support.

“What do you think happened, Warlock?” Crowley asked. “When I...vanished?”

Warlock fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment.

“Well,” he said, “you disappeared for a while. Maybe six hours? And then you reappeared again.”

“What do you think that means?’

Warlock worried a loose thread on his pajamas with his fingers. 

“You’re magic?” he tried cautiously.

“Not quite,” Crowley said. He sighed; there was no way to break this gently. “Warlock, I’m a demon.” 

Warlock’s brow furrowed. “Demons aren’t real.”

“I assure you, they very much are.” 

“What, like God and angels are real?” Warlock retorted. 

“Yes,” Crowley said. 

“Okay...but _if_ they were real, demons have horns and tails and they’re _evil_ , Dad,” Warlock insisted. “You’re not evil. Are you a wizard?” 

“Warlock, look at me.” Crowley knew that his yellow eyes glowed in the dark. “Do these look like the eyes of a wizard? They’re the eyes of a snake. A serpent. I’m a _demon_ , kiddo. And Mr Fell, he’s an angel. That’s why he’s, you know, the way that he is.” 

Warlock still didn’t look convinced. “Can you prove it?”

“Yes,” Crowley said, and then sighed. “Well, not right now. My body is still healing. Maybe tomorrow.” 

“Okay, Dad,” Warlock said skeptically. “You can show me tomorrow.” 

He snuggled back down in the blankets. Crowley sighed. “You’re going to stay here tonight, aren’t you?” 

“Adam snores,” Warlock repeated. “Plus, you might disappear again.” 

Crowley’s useless heart clenched. “I won’t.” 

He lay down again, curling around Warlock’s small frame, and waited until the boy’s breathing evened out before he dropped off into sleep.

****

Aziraphale spent the night reading in his back room. Until now, he would have passed the night in his bedroom, which preserved the illusion for Adam that he was a human who slept. It was no longer necessary for him to maintain that illusion, and besides, right now there was a demon occupying his bed.

 _That_ thought sent a delightful shudder down his spine, and Aziraphale sat up, appalled. _No_. No, that absolutely would not do _at all_. Yes, Crowley had an attractive corporation. He could admit that much. He admired the human form in all its shapes and sizes and configurations. His preferences tend to skew toward human men, true, and Crowley was a fine specimen--

 _Stop it_ , he told himself forcefully. _Focus_. He needed to focus on Adam and the mission. Raise the Antichrist surrounded by love and warmth and goodness, and stop Armageddon. That was _all_ he could afford to focus on right now. That was all that mattered. 

He heard Adam wake up around eight, and Warlock got up shortly thereafter. The boys poured themselves bowls of cereal and watched television upstairs while they ate. After a while, they came down to the bookshop and entered the back room. 

“Good morning, dears,” Aziraphale said, fixing them both with a smile. “Can I get you anything?”

“Nah, Dad, we’re just gonna read,” Adam said. Aziraphale kept a variety of age-appropriate books back here specifically for Adam, so that he could spend time down here while Aziraphale had the shop open. He led Warlock over to the shelf of books and the boys browsed for a few minutes before making their selections and settling on the sofa. 

It was almost noon by the time Crowley surfaced. He stumbled down the stairs and into the backroom, blearily knuckling his eyes before shoving his sunglasses on his face. 

“Wassit?” he muttered. He collapsed in a pile of limbs on Aziraphale’s other armchair. 

“We’re just having a nice, quiet morning,” Aziraphale said, and he couldn’t help the happy wriggle. “You’re welcome to join us, if you like.”

“Ugh, reading’s _boring_ ,” Crowley said. “Don’t do it.” 

“You don’t _read_?” 

“Nah.” Crowley waved a hand. “S’what movies are for, innit?”

“Actually,” Adam said, snapping his book shut, “we would like to talk to you.” 

Aziraphale blinked at him. “What?”

Warlock closed his book as well. He sat up, mimicking Adam’s perfect posture, and said, “We have questions.” 

“Questions are good.” Crowley waved a hand in Warlock’s direction. “Go on. I like questions.” 

Warlock leveled him with a hard look. “Prove to me you’re a demon.” 

Crowley stared at him. “Wot?” 

“You said you were a demon and that you would show me.” Warlock lifted his chin. “I don’t believe you.” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale cautioned. “I don’t know if you’re up to full strength yet. You probably shouldn’t--” 

“No, no.” Crowley waved him off and got unsteadily to his feet. “Kid’s right. I made him a promise, and I’ll keep it. Right, stay where you all are.”

It took longer than it should have. Crowley visibly trembled with effort, and moments later, his black wings _whooshed_ into existence. _Oh_ , and what gorgeous wings they were! Aziraphale hadn’t appreciated them properly the other night. Sleek and black as spilled ink. He took _excellent_ care of them, and even as weak as he was, the wings made him look impressive. 

“That good enough for you?” Crowley asked the boys. They both exchanged a look.

“Now you,” Adam said to Aziraphale. “To prove that you’re an angel.”

“Goodness, I suppose that if I must…” Aziraphale set his book carefully aside and stood. He made sure he was standing a safe distance away from his piles of books before he manifested his own wings. “There. Is that satisfactory?” 

Adam looked at Warlock, who shrugged. 

“For now,” he said. “We might have more questions later on, though. Come on, Warlock.”

They put their books away and disappeared upstairs. Crowley shoved his wings back into that liminal space with a groan. Aziraphale followed suit.

“Well, that was certainly...something.”

“Interrogated by my own kid,” Crowley muttered. “I blame Adam for that one.” 

****

Crowley had only intended to stay in the bookshop for another day or so, at least until he felt he was strong enough to look after Warlock on his own. Somehow, though, an entire week passed without him quite realizing it. He spent most of his time asleep, regaining his energy so that he could heal his injuries when he was awake. By the end of the week, he realized he was probably strong enough to return to his flat with Warlock, and also realized that he didn’t particularly _want_ to.

The thing was...he _liked_ being here. He liked being around Aziraphale. He liked that Warlock had a companion. He enjoyed taking meals with Aziraphale, watching him eat (relishing in it, in fact), and enjoyed getting _ridiculously_ drunk with him in the evenings after the boys had gone to bed. He had discovered all the sunniest spots in the bookshop, and when he didn’t feel like being stuck inside his human corporation, he’d turn into a snake and take a nap in the sun. This had the added benefit of chasing away any customers who had the misfortune to wander into the bookshop, for which Aziraphale was exceedingly grateful.

On Friday night, they let the boys stay up for an extra two hours before sending them to bed. They then retreated to the back room. Crowley was acutely aware that this was probably the last night he could get away with remaining in the bookshop, and that he’d have to take Warlock home tomorrow. They could only intrude on Aziraphale and Adam for so long.

Aziraphale fetched a bottle of wine and some glasses from the kitchen, and poured them each a generous serving. He handed one to Crowley, and then sat carefully in his chair again. There was a furrow between his brows. He took a sip of wine, then set it aside and folded his hands. He drew a deep breath. “Crowley, I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I have a proposition for you.” 

Crowley grunted as he sprawled in the chair. “An angel propositioning a demon? Pretty sure that’s not allowed.”

Aziraphale gave him a withering look. “That is not at _all_ what I meant and you know it. I mean that we’re in a predicament now with the boys. We don’t know which of them is truly the Antichrist, when they’ve both displayed the power to control reality as they see fit.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said sullenly. “S’fair point. We’re in more of a pickle now than we were when this whole mess started, aren’t we?” 

“Which is why I propose that we move in together.”

Crowley _almost_ spat out his mouthful of wine, which would have been a waste of good wine, really. Instead, he inhaled it and immediately doubled over in a coughing fit. He heard Aziraphale give a long-suffering sigh.

“You want to _what?_ ” 

“There’s no need to be so dramatic about it,” Aziraphale admonished. “It’s a practical solution to our mutual problem. We can influence the boys equally, and we can keep an eye on them. One of them is going to start to come into his powers very soon, and we’re the only two agents of Heaven and Hell who want to stop the Apocalypse from happening. It seems to me we’d be slightly more effective together than apart.” 

“Well, I’m not having an angel move into my flat,” Crowley muttered into his glass, even as his heart flip-flopped in his chest. Was this actually happening?

“And I’m certainly not having a demon live in my bookshop,” Aziraphale said primly. “No, we must move to neutral ground. I was thinking Tadfield might be a good option.” 

“You’ve been _thinking_ about this?” Crowley sputtered. “For how long?”

“You were unconscious for two days,” Aziraphale said defensively. “I had to do _something_ productive.”

“Why Tadfield?” Crowley demanded.

“It’s where it all began, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said. “You were supposed to deliver the Antichrist there. An order of Satanic nuns set up shop there. I’m not saying that the Apocalypse will happen there, but...there must be _something_ significant about the place. Not to mention that it’s a tiny village. I doubt your side or mine would think of looking for us there.” 

“Would you sell the bookshop?”

Aziraphale looked scandalized. “ _Absolutely not._ Besides, if my side _does_ get wind of my whereabouts and comes looking for me, I want to leave this here for them to find. As a decoy, of sorts. You should consider doing the same with your flat and any other property you might own in London. Especially since your side is actually in contact with you.” 

“Yeah, ‘s a fair point. Gotta make it look like London is still my base of operations.” Crowley seemed to realize what he had said, and groaned theatrically. “I cannot _believe_ we’re even discussing this. Us! An angel and a demon! Moving in together! We’ll be lucky to last until the end of the world without killing each other first.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale said. “We’ve managed thus far.” 

Crowley glowered at him. “You’re insufferable.” 

“And you’re incorrigible, my dear.” Aziraphale sipped his wine. “And somehow, we’re the only chance the Earth has.” 

“There’s a terrifying thought.” Crowley held up his glass. “Well. To the Earth, then.” 

He drained it in one long swallow.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not dead and neither is this fic! As I warned everyone at the beginning, updates are going to continue to be sporadic due to Real Life (TM) writing commitments, but they will happen. So here's a lil chapter to tide everyone over. Thanks to all who have read and commented so far!

They broke the news to the boys separately. Adam, according to Aziraphale, had taken it with the same ease that he handled everything else in life. Warlock, on the other hand, took it rather badly. 

“I don’t wanna _move_!” he shouted, his small hands clenched into fists. “I like it here! Why do we have to _leave_?”

“We have to move because of my job,” Crowley said, which was _technically_ the truth. Well, the truth stretched to the breaking point. “I’m sorry, Warlock, but we need to move to Tadfield. But look, Adam’s coming, too.” 

“ _Why_? There’s nothing in Tadfield. It’s _boring._ ” 

Oh, he should have thought this through. Damn him and his mouth, always running ahead of his brain. 

“Because...Tadfield doesn’t have a bookshop,” he said, mentally making a note to remember to check and see if that was the case, and if it _did_ have a bookshop, to have the owners suddenly realize that their biggest dream in life was to leave the quiet countryside for a bustling city. Maybe New York. “Mr Fell’s going to open one, yeah? And we thought, well, if we’re _both_ moving to Tadfield, it’d make sense to go in on a house together, since you and Adam are already friends.” 

Warlock scowled. “We’re going to be _living_ with them?”

“You don’t want to? I thought you liked Adam.”

“He’s alright.” Warlock rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. “But I like it here with _you_. Where it’s just us. And I like my school, and my friends, and I _don’t wanna move_!” 

“It’s not negotiable, Warlock,” Crowley said firmly. “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult, but we’re moving, and that’s final. You don’t get to have a say in this decision.” 

Warlock’s face flushed angrily. “ _I hate you_!”

He stomped off to his room and slammed the door, leaving Crowley standing in the kitchen and staring numbly after him. 

“He _hates_ me, angel,” he moaned into the phone later, after a fraught dinner and an hour spent listening to Warlock cry to himself alone in his room before he fell asleep. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. Warlock doesn’t hate you.”

“That’s what he _said_.” 

“He’s an eight-year-old child who just learned that his life is going to change forever. I’m sure it’s a difficult thing for him to process at the moment.” Crowley listened to the _clink_ of a spoon scraping against the inside of a mug. Aziraphale was fixing himself a cup of tea--or a hot toddy. “Give him some time.” 

“Easy for you to say. Adam _loves_ you.” 

“Yes, Adam loves me so much he summoned a _literal demon_ behind my back to come play with him.” 

“I--alright, you’ve got me there, that doesn’t speak well to your parenting skills.” 

“Warlock will come around,” Aziraphale said. “You must be patient with him.” 

“Bloody hell.” Crowley rested his forehead on the table. “Listen to me. ‘m upset because the _Antichrist_ said he doesn’t _like me_. What kind of pathetic demon am I?”

“No, dear, you’re upset because your _child_ said he hated you, which of course he does not. He’s just upset,” Aziraphale said levelly. “Besides, he’s not the Antichrist. Adam is.” 

Crowley was too tired and too raw to argue about that again. 

“Do you think it would help if the boys felt as though they had some say in the whole process?” Aziraphale went on.

“How d’you mean?” 

“We could have them research the town. Find things they would like to do. We could even get their input on the available houses, let them feel like they had a say in the one that we bought.” 

All of this talk of _we_ and _us_ was doing Crowley’s head in. It was almost more than his pathetic heart could bear. 

“Ngk--yeah, alright, I guess we could do that,” he said. “I’ll come up with something.”

Which was how the four of them found themselves tucked comfortably together in the back of the bookshop one Friday night. The boys had mugs of hot cocoa while Aziraphale and Crowley had glasses of red wine. The low table had been cleared of books and other odds and ends--despite Aziraphale’s protestations--and Crowley spread the blueprint out on the table. The boys leaned over it. 

“This is what our house will look like,” Crowley said. He nearly choked on _our_ , but reined his treacherous tongue under control just in time. “You’ve got bedrooms here, kitchen, main room, a study for Mr Fell, and an office for me.” 

He indicated the rooms on the blueprint, then pulled a pen out of his pocket. “Okay, boys, pick your rooms.” 

Warlock and Adam glanced at each other, and then at their dads. 

“Really?” Warlock sounded skeptical.

“Really,” Crowley said. “This is your house, too. We want you to have a part in it.” 

Adam decided on a corner bedroom with two wide windows that faced north and east. Warlock selected the one next to his, which only had the one window but a larger closet. Crowley then selected the west-facing bedroom that got the late-afternoon sun, leaving Aziraphale with the smallest bedroom. But it was tucked up right against the study he was bound to turn into a library, and he didn’t sleep much anyway. All in all, it seemed like a fair division of the house’s bedrooms.

“Hey, Dad?” Adam chewed his lip, looking at Aziraphale nervously.

“Yes, dearest?” Aziraphale gave him a fond smile and smoothed down some of Adam’s unruly golden curls. 

“Can we, er, make some suggestions?” 

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, who shrugged. “What kind of suggestions?” 

“Are there any trees?” Adam asked.

“Sure.” Crowley couldn’t recall, exactly, but if Adam wanted trees, he was going to get trees. He grabbed the pen and drew some circles in various places around the yard. He could create those easily. “These are the trees. Is that satisfactory?”

“Yep,” Adam said happily. 

“And… can we have a treehouse?” Warlock asked.

“A treehouse.” 

Warlock took the pen from Crowley and drew an X over one of the trees. “In this tree?” 

“Sure,” Crowley said. That wouldn’t be too difficult to miracle out of thin air, and he could probably explain it away to Hell by mentioning that tree houses were exceedingly dangerous, and also human children fought over them all the time. Crowley would simply be sowing more discontent by creating one. He would simply leave out that the treehouse was for his child. 

“Is there a library?” Adam asked.

“Of course there will be a _library_ ,” Aziraphale said indignantly. “Do you really think I would live in a house without a library? It will go right here.” 

Aziraphale took the pen and circled almost the entire eastern half of the house. He then proceeded to block off a section of the yard in a giant rectangle, and then sketched a smaller square on top of it. 

“You’ll need space for a garden, of course,” he said to Crowley, indicating the rectangle. “And a garden shed, to keep all of your supplies.”

He tapped the square. Crowley felt a lump grow in his throat, which he beat back with thoughts of _you are a demon, damn it, get a hold of yourself!_

“Yeah,” he said weakly. “Yeah, ‘course, definitely need that.”

“Can we have a moat?” Adam asked excitedly.

“No,” Aziraphale and Crowley answered at once. Adam pouted. 

“A tire swing?” Warlock tried, and Crowley added a note by one of the other trees. 

“Are there other kids there?” Adam asked. 

“Yeah, ‘course,” Crowley said, hoping it was true. It was a sleepy village--there _had_ to be other children, hadn’t there? If there weren’t, he would have to think of a solution, and fast. He couldn’t exactly miracle children out of thin air the way that he could trees. He would have to find some families in the nearby larger cities and plant the idea in their brains that they had to move to Tadfield, immediately. 

“What about a pond?”

“A pond?” Crowley repeated blankly.

“Yeah,” Adam said, “so Dad and I can feed the ducks. We _always_ go to feed the ducks.” 

“I want to feed the ducks, too,” Warlock said.

“Sure, yeah, absolutely,” Crowley said, making a mental note to find a house near a pond--or create one from nothing, if need be. He could probably explain it away to Hell as an inconvenience to motorists in the village, as the pond would always flood its banks and cover up the roads at the slightest bit of rain. Yeah, that should do nicely. “There will be a pond with ducks.” 

“Cool,” Adam said.

“When do we have to move?” Warlock asked. He was more subdued than Adam--clearly _trying_ to be excited about it, but still not at all happy about the impending change. 

“As soon as possible,” Aziraphale said. “Our jobs need us to relocate quickly.” 

“Next month,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale gave him a tiny nod in assent. 

Later, once the boys had gone off to play, Crowley conjured them both glasses of scotch and said, “Boundaries.”

“What about boundaries?” Aziraphale asked, immediately wary. 

“We need to have some ground rules if we’re going to be living together,” Crowley said. “First off, we don’t interfere with the way we raise the boys. You parent your kid and I’ll parent mine.” 

“Fair enough,” Aziraphale said. 

“Except when we gotta influence them,” Crowley said, holding up a finger. 

“Well, how do I know you won’t interfere with every single parenting choice I make under the guise of _influence_?” Aziraphale countered. 

That was a good point. Crowley thought about it for a moment.

“We need a quota,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Like...once a week, you can expose Warlock to Good and angelic things. And I get to do the same for Adam. Well, Evil and demonic things, I mean.”

“Once a week hardly seems like enough,” Aziraphale said. “Not if we’re going to avert the Apocalypse in less than three years.” 

“Fine. Twice a week?”

“Once a day,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley groaned. Why was this so much _work_ ? “Fine, fine, once a day. And speaking of no interference, I don’t want you getting your angelic mitts all over my job, either. You might be a rogue angel, but I still report to Hell. They give me jobs to do. I have to carry out those jobs, or I get recalled to Hell and another demon gets sent in my place. And believe me, none of them are half as _charming_ as I am.” 

Aziraphale grimaced. “That’s a rather low bar, but I see your point. Fine. Do whatever it is Hell asks you to do, but _don’t_ tell me about it. I don’t want to know.” 

“Can do, angel. Oh, and another thing-- _don’t_ coddle my plants.”

“Coddle your plants?” Aziraphale repeated, puzzled.

“No, _don’t_ coddle them,” Crowley said. “In fact, just ignore them. Don’t acknowledge them. It’ll be better if you pretend they don’t even exist. I can only imagine what they’ll do if an _angel_ starts paying attention to them. I’ll never get control of them again.” 

“Alright,” Aziraphale said slowly, in his _I have no idea what you’re talking about and so I’m not even going to go there_ voice. “Well, I won’t have reason to acknowledge your plants as long as you keep them _far_ away from my books. No, no, that won’t do at all. All that dirt and the dead leaves and the _humidity_ …”

“My plants do _not_ drop dead leaves,” Crowley growled. They wouldn’t dare. But the angel had a point--their respective hobbies required two completely different environments. “All right, fine, you can have a completely separate room all to yourself for your books, but I need one for my plants. My _indoor_ plants.”

Aziraphale waved a hand at the blueprint. “By all means, dear boy, create one. You’ll have no argument from me.” 

Crowley picked up the pencil and tacked on an extra room to the cottage--which should be called a _house_ or a _mansion_ by this point, but its outside dimensions would never change. It was only the inside that would be larger. 

“In fact, you should never touch my books,” Aziraphale said abruptly. Crowley looked up at him.

“Excuse me, what have I ever done to your books?”

“Nothing yet,” Aziraphale allowed, “but I will only be taking my _personal_ personal collection Tadfield. All my first editions. The rest will stay here. So please _do not_ touch any of the books in the cottage.” 

“I think you need to worry about the boys more than you do about me,” Crowley muttered, but he made a dutiful mental note. He would never want to ruin any of Aziraphale’s beloved books. “Um...you should probably know that I turn into a snake sometimes.” 

Aziraphale blinked at him. “Really?” 

“Yeah. You know, Serpent of Eden and all.” Crowley shrugged as nonchalantly as possible. “Sometimes I just get the urge to...go snakey.” 

“That’s fine, dear.” Aziraphale must have been pretty sloshed at this point, because he leaned over and actually patted Crowley’s hand. “We all have our idiosyncrasies.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, trying not to spontaneously combust at the feel of Aziraphale’s warm skin against his own. “Ngk. Idiosyncrasies.” 

“What do you normally do, as a snake?” 

“Do?” Crowley blinked at him. “Nothing, really. Curl up on a sunny rock and have a good snooze.” 

“Oh, that’s alright, then.” Aziraphale beamed at him, and it was like getting hit with the full blast of the sun. “As long as you don’t feel the need to take a nap on my books, I don’t see why it should matter that you turn into a snake sometimes.” 

Crowley tried to ignore the delighted feeling that washed through him. Aziraphale _didn’t care._ “What about you? Any bad habits I should know about?” 

“Of course not,” Aziraphale said primly. “I think you’ll find me a most delightful housemate. You won’t even know I’m there. I am _very_ easy to live with, thank you very much.”

For once, Crowley’s self-preservation instincts were working in sync with his brain, and he wisely said nothing.


	9. Chapter 9

Aziraphale hadn’t properly appreciated the sheer amount of _work_ it was going to take to make the move from London to Tadfield. It wasn’t only choosing which items to take to the new house, and which ones to leave behind (for Aziraphale had absolutely no intention of selling the shop). It was uprooting their entire _lives_. All of his little routines, his creature comforts, everything he had come to rely on after living in Soho for over two hundred years, all of that was going away. It was missing the bakery on the corner, and walking there on Saturday mornings to purchase pastries with Adam. It was missing the way the afternoon sunlight pooled in various spots around the bookshop. It was missing those customers who stopped by only to admire his rarest tomes, never to buy them, and the dealers he had built relationships with over the decades. All of that, gone.

It wouldn’t be forever--well, at least, it wouldn’t be forever as long as he and Crowley pulled off this mad scheme of theirs. Once the boys turned eleven, and the whole Apocalypse business was averted, then he could return. He and Adam could resume their lives here, with the few years spent in Tadfield nothing more than a blip on the radar. 

Still, he would miss Soho. 

“Dad,” Adam asked one morning, “can we get a dog once we move?” 

Aziraphale was carefully packing some of his most precious books in a specially-sealed container to be transported to Tadfield. After two hundred years of an angel living within its walls, the shop had special protections seeped into it, but he still didn’t trust leaving behind his most valuable books if he wasn’t going to physically be here. 

“A dog?” Aziraphale repeated, as though Adam had never made this request of him before.

“Yeah! Because we’ll have a big yard, and lots of space for ‘im to play, and Warlock and I can take care of him, you and Mr Crowley won’t have to do a thing--”

“Breathe, Adam,” Aziraphale said gently. “I don’t know if we will. Mr Crowley might not like dogs.” 

Adam looked at him blankly. “Who doesn’t like dogs?” 

That was a good point, though in reality, it would probably be the other way around. Aziraphale didn’t imagine there were too many dogs that were fond of snakes. “Let’s get the move out of the way first, and then we’ll see.” 

“Alright,” Adam said, but he was distinctly more subdued now. Aziraphale made a mental note to take him for ice cream later that night to cheer him up. 

“You’ve been packing for two weeks now and this shop _literally_ hasn’t changed,” Crowley complained the next night as they settled in for their usual round of drinks in the back room. “How the hell many books do you own, angel? You haven’t even made a dent in your collection.” 

“I’ve made _quite_ a dent in the collection, thank you,” Aziraphale sniffed. “ _You_ simply don’t pay attention.” 

“Don’t pay attention, my arse. I bet you’ve got some pocket universes stuffed full of books and _those_ are the ones you’re taking with us.” Crowley’s eyebrows lifted over his sunglasses as he took a long drink of wine. He then pointed at Aziraphale and said, “Ha! I knew it. You do, don’t you?” 

“Well, I made a handful of them when I was first sent to Earth,” Aziraphale said. “You never know when a pocket universe or two might come in handy, you know. I didn’t know what to expect down here! I needed a place to stash my belongings, the flaming sword, et cetera. When I left the ranks, the pocket universes simply came with me. Heaven never shut them down. I don’t even think they’re aware of them. They’re not very _large_ universes anyway, just big enough to hold a few items.”

“How many books do you have tucked away in them, then?” 

Aziraphale muttered, “Three hundred and thirty-one,” against the rim of his glass, and Crowley cackled.

He was such a _strange_ demon. Not only because he wanted to save the world--no, that was probably the least strange thing about him. From what little Crowley had said about it, Hell was a damp, disgusting, filthy place, and far too cold for a cold-blooded creature like himself. Of course he would want to hold onto his Earthside assignment for as long as possible, and if that meant averting the Apocalypse, then so be it. 

It was everything _else_ about him that was so odd, from his stylish clothes to the fact that his idea of demonic mischief was gluing coins to the pavement and giggling ( _giggling!)_ as he watched humans try to pick them up. Then, of course, there was the matter of Warlock. The boy had had an unorthodox upbringing--and name--but it was clear that Crowley was _fond_ of the boy. Perhaps even loved him, so far as demons _could_ love. Or at least _believed_ that he loved him. 

And he was--all right, there was no way around it. He was _attractive_ , and though Aziraphale’s experience with demons was rather limited, he had never seen one quite like Crowley. Everything about him was _alluring_ , from the way his hips seemed to swing independently of his spine to his flaming hair to that sharp nose and jaw. It didn’t matter if he showed up in Aziraphale’s shop wearing his customary black trousers and blazer or the occasional skintight dress--he was bloody _gorgeous_. 

And that, Aziraphale realized morosely as the sun set on the night before their impending move, was going to be a _problem_. 

***

On the day of their move to Tadfield, Warlock woke Crowley at five in the morning demanding pancakes with chocolate chips. There was no way, absolutely _no way_ , that Warlock was not the Antichrist. Only the child of Satan could be so cruel and devilish to wake him that early. 

Crowley absolutely couldn’t deny him. He was about to rip the boy away from everything he knew--his school, all his friends, their home. He got out of bed, grabbed his iPad to look up a recipe, and set about making the best damn chocolate chip pancakes Warlock could ask for. 

They ate their disgustingly sweet breakfast off paper plates amid a pile of pillows on the floor. Everything else in the flat had been packed up and was ready for the movers. Crowley was surprised to find that he would miss this place, with its foreboding gray walls, high ceiling, and rooms that had been devoid of life before he filled them with plants and Warlock. He had lived in thousands of different places over thousands of years, but this was the first one that had felt like home. He had raised Warlock here. It was going to be an adjustment, that was for certain. 

The movers arrived promptly at nine. It was bad enough that Crowley was having to do this move without the aid of any miracles, like the _humans_ did it. He refused, however, to be at the mercy of a late moving company, and so made sure that the truck showed up precisely on time. In fact, it was thirty seconds early. 

Crowley ordered the movers about with relish while Warlock tucked himself into a corner with a blanket, a book, and one of his handheld gaming devices to keep himself occupied, ignoring the flurry of people around him. All in all, the process of loading the truck only took an hour, much faster than it should have. 

“Hey, Hellspawn.” Crowley crouched in front of him and carefully pulled Warlock’s headphones off his ears. “That was the last box. They’re going to meet us in Tadfield. You ready to go?” 

“No,” Warlock said morosely, and Crowley’s shriveled heart cleaved neatly in two. 

“You’re going to have a _big_ room, much bigger than the one you have now,” Crowley tried. “And a tree house, and a pond, and the ducks--”

“Adam wants those things, not me.” Warlock scowled at him, but there was a tremor in his voice. “You like Adam better than me. You want _him_ to be your son.” 

“Warlock,” Crowley breathed, stunned. “ _No_. That’s not true.” 

“Yes, it is,” Warlock said mulishly. “I don’t want to move to Tadfield. You just wanna be closer to Adam and Mr Fell. You like them better.” 

Oh, Go--Sata-- _whatever_ . Crowley had fucked up, _royally_ fucked up, and the worst part of it was, he didn’t even know _how_. 

“I don’t,” he said helplessly. “I promise that I don’t, Warlock. Look, Adam’s a nice kid and all, but he’s not _you_ . I promise that I don’t like him more than you. You’re my _son_.”

Warlock rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. “But you don’t care what I want. I don’t want to move, and you don’t care.” 

“I do care, Warlock, I--”

“Then _why are we moving_?” 

Warlock’s shout echoed through the cavernous, empty flat. Crowley dragged his hands down his face. 

“We’re going to come back,” he said desperately. He would have said _anything_ at this point to appease Warlock, but at least this much was true. “We’ll come back, Warlock. This isn’t going to be forever. Just until you’re eleven.” 

Warlock frowned at him, puzzled. “Why?” 

“It’s--it’s complicated, kiddo, but it’s for my job. For my demon job,” he clarified. He had other humans jobs that he dabbled in, of course, but those could all be put on hold. “It’ll only be until you’re eleven years old, and then we can come back here.” 

This seemed to appease Warlock slightly. “You promise?”

Honestly, Crowley hadn’t planned on coming back to Mayfair, but he nodded vigorously. “Yes. Absolutely. Soon as you hit eleven, we’ll come back here.” 

“That’s a long time from now,” Warlock said, frowning, and Crowley almost laughed. Three years was barely any time at all, a drop in the ocean. It certainly wasn’t long enough to pull off this plan. What Warlock saw as an eternity was little more than a blink of an eye. 

“It won’t feel that long, I promise.” Crowley kissed his forehead and then held out his hand. Warlock took it, and Crowley pulled him to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go home.” 

***

The movers turned around and headed right for Soho as soon as they had unpacked the truck and deposited everything unceremoniously into the vast main room of the new house. Crowley spared a few demonic miracles to get all the furniture placed in the bedrooms and main room, but the rest of the unpacking would have to be done by hand. 

Warlock was appeased somewhat when he finally saw his room. It was larger than the one in the Mayfair flat and got about as much light. But it was the closet that truly drew his attention, a large monstrosity that could almost have been a second bedroom. Crowley had known from the moment he laid eyes on it that Warlock was going to _love_ it.

“Thought you might like it,” Crowley said, leaning against the wall while Warlock inspected the closet. “Room for all your clothes and shoes, and then some. We’ll have to go back to London and shop for some more clothes for you, really fill this place up.” 

There was even a vanity built into one wall. Warlock sat in the chair and regarded his reflection in the mirror. 

“All your makeup can go here,” Crowley said, indicating the drawers. “I know you’re not really one for jewelry, but that can go here if you ever change your mind. And there’s spots for your shoes, and all your clothes, and--” 

“Dad,” Warlock said, and Crowley stopped talking. “It’s nice. Thanks.” 

Crowley couldn’t help it. He wrapped his arms around Warlock’s shoulders and pressed a noisy kiss to his cheek. Warlock squirmed away, laughing. “Start unpacking your stuff. I’ll be in the plant room.” 

Getting all of his house plants set up just the way he liked them was Crowley’s first order of business. He snarled and cursed at them as he arranged them lovingly around the room, making sure that each one was in a spot that gave it optimum light. 

He was so engrossed in his project that he didn’t hear when the moving truck pulled up to the cottage for the second time, and didn’t realize Aziraphale and Adam had arrived until Warlock shouted, “Dad, they’re here!” 

A flurry of activity descended on the cottage. Crowley watched in amusement as the movers unloaded box after box of books while Aziraphale hovered and fretted and fussed. He rather enjoyed watching Aziraphale work himself into a tizzy. His corporation did odd things when he was flustered, like develop two spots of color high on Aziraphale’s cheeks, which were honestly more alluring than they had any right to be. Crowley wanted to touch them with his fingertips...press his lips to them--

 _No_. He was _not_ allowed lustful feelings about a goddamn _angel_. They were supposed to do a job together, and that was _it_. Once the Apocalypse was averted, they would go their separate ways and enjoy the planet they had saved. Obsessing over the angel was a distraction that Crowley couldn’t afford. 

“The movers were late,” Aziraphale commented at one point. 

“Yeah, sorry about that. We had a bit of a...difficult time getting out of the flat,” Crowley said, and then refused to elaborate any further. 

Once the books were unloaded, the rest of the process went rather quickly. Adam’s things were offloaded, followed by some pieces of furniture Crowley recognized from the bookshop, and then--

“ _Alcohol_ ,” Crowley breathed reverently. Aziraphale snorted.

“Yes, far be it from me to forget to bring the most important part of the bookshop,” he said dryly. “I know you’re only over as often as you are because of my impressive collection of alcohol.”

“Guess I’ve been busted,” Crowley said, flashing what he _knew_ was a devilish grin. Aziraphale flushed, which was a delightful look on him. “Whatever will you do with me, angel? _Punish_ me?”

“You _fiend_ ,” Aziraphale muttered. “I can’t believe you let me agree to this.”

“It was _your_ idea.” 

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale said, surveying the towers of boxes and haphazardly-placed furniture. “I suppose it was.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening unpacking and setting up the house the human way. Warlock made himself scarce for most of the day, staying in his room, but Adam popped up now and then to excitedly show them a forgotten childhood trinket he had re-discovered while unpacking. 

Warlock finally emerged while Aziraphale and Crowley were arguing over the placement of furniture in the main room. He molded himself to Crowley’s side, and Crowley put an arm around his shoulders. 

“Warlock!” Adam greeted cheerfully, popping out from behind Aziraphale. “Wanna go down to the pond?”

“No,” Warlock said sullenly, and started to walk away. 

“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun!” 

“Shut _up_ , Adam,” Warlock snapped, and then he disappeared down the hall. The sound of his bedroom door slamming echoed through the empty house.

Crowley found his voice several seconds too late. “Warlock!” 

“Well,” Aziraphale said dryly, tugging Adam to his side in a loose hug, “it looks as though your demonic influence is coming off nicely on him.” 

“Hey, that’s my kid you’re talking about,” Crowley snapped at him. “He’s not evil just because he’s having a bad day.” 

“Why is Warlock having a bad day?” Adam asked.

 _Because he thinks I'd prefer it if you were my son_ , Crowley thought, and even in his mind the words cut like glass. “Because he didn’t want to move.” 

“Oh,” Adam said. And then, with almost frightening conviction, he added, “He’ll like it here.”

“Well,” Crowley said, “that’s not ominous at all.”

***

Their first disagreement happened over dinner. _Because_ of dinner, actually, because Crowley wanted to cook something for Warlock and Aziraphale wanted to make something for Adam, and they couldn’t both use the space at the same time. Then Aziraphale pointed out that it was ridiculous to cook two separate meals for the boys and they should just prepare something together, and then they fought for half an hour about _what_ to prepare. Adam and Warlock reached a temporary truce in the name of food, and poured themselves bowls of cereal and ate some fruit while their parents fought. 

The next argument came less than an hour later. Adam and Warlock were curled up on opposite ends of the couch, each of them engrossed in a book. Aziraphale put a record on the gramophone--Bach, of course, because the angel was bloody predictable. 

“Haven’t you listened to _anything_ from this century? Or even the twentieth?” Crowley groaned and dropped his head back against his chair. 

“Not all of us are fans of Freddie Mars, my dear,” Aziraphale said, delicately turning a page in his book.

“Freddie _Mercury_ , angel, for fuck’s sake.” 

“Language!”

“S’nothing the Hellspawn hasn’t heard before,” Crowley said, flapping his hand in Warlock’s direction. 

All at once, the music screeched to a halt. A thin, rasping voice emerged from the gramophone.

“ _Crawly,_ ” it wheezed, and everybody in the room froze. “ _Crawly. Are you there?_ ”

Crowley shared a panicked look with Aziraphale. “Er--yes, yep, that’s me. I’m here.” 

“ _Your report is overdue, Crawly._ ”

“No, no, that can’t be right,” Crowley lied. “Have Dagon check the files again, I know I sent it down last week.” 

That would buy him at least two weeks. If someone ever told them they lost something, then Dagon would want to thoroughly check every piece of paper that had crossed their desk in the last year. 

_“No,_ ” the voice said. “ _We will not tolerate any more of your lies, Crawly, nor any further delays. Come see us at once._ ”

Music spilled out of the gramophone once more. Warlock’s eyes were wide and terrified. 

“Don’t go,” he said. 

“Warlock--”

“Please, Dad, _don’t_ ,” he pleaded. “They almost _killed_ you!” 

“Nah,” Crowley said, with bravado he didn’t feel. “ _That_ was nothing. And so is this. Look, I’m just going to pop down there quick and clear this whole matter up. Aziraphale will look after you in the meantime.”

He abruptly realized that they had never actually discussed this, what it would look like when Crowley was inevitably called away on hellish business. He caught Aziraphale’s eye, and the angel gave an almost imperceptible nod. 

“Be back in a tick,” he said. He snapped his fingers, and the world dissolved.


End file.
